I apologize for the lack of entries- as you may have read, Greg and I were in the Philippines without uber easy access to the Internet, ,and then when we returned home, we were greeted with NO access at our modern home. Funny how that works. At any rate, I promise to rehash some of the better moments of our vacation and then continue on with life as usual.
I am going to jump around and start with this, an interaction that happened one of the last days we were in Allen. Let me back up and give a little background on the small town of Allen, Northern Samar. This is the town where my mom, Mama Smith nee Zamora, was raised. Therefore, my grandparents still reside there, prompting Greg and I to take our vacation there. It is a very small rural town where the largest building in the town is the Church and everyone knows a lot about your business. The town has "brown outs" every Saturday in order to conserve the electricity they have and also to cause excessive sweating in the townspeople. Since Allen is such a small town, there are only a few places to buy everyday items and it is even more limited on Sundays ( which I came to find out and is the ignitor of my story).
I am going to preface this by saying this topic will probably be most amusing to my female friends who understand the joys ( insert sarcastic snort here) of being a woman. I am one of the most prepared travellers out there. I usually pack an excess amount of items in three different categories: Absolutely needed items, possible needed items and this-is-a-longshot-but-on-an-island-I-might-need-this items. Let me just say that I was not expecting to run out of a certain feminine hygiene product while there.
On this particular Sunday afternoon, Greg, Aunt Remy and myself went out for a walk to the Pharmacy in order to purchase Tampons. Yup, I said it,
tampons. We decided to bring my aunt along since I can only understand the local dialect, not speak it back. Auntie Remy and I walk up to the counter and she proceeds to ask them if they carry tampons. The woman looks at me and then her with a confusing look on her face. Lucky for us, there is a woman next to us who knows exactly what we are talking about. What ensues next is what was to be a back and forth banter about this particular product. The woman next to me tried to explain to the shop girl about what a tampon is.
" It looks like a finger, made of cotton with a string and is kind of like a suppository"- all the while I am trying to also explain which I think made it worse.
The girl behind the counter then walked off. At this point I was hoping the shopgirl didn't think I was constipated and come back with an enema package. She came back with another shopgirl who we had to repeat the story to. Her answer was no- they only had Charming.
"Charming?" I asked "what's so charming about your period?"
Apparently in this neck of the woods, Tampons are not used, only what they call Sanitary Napkins are available. So I am settled to just purchase those big bulky "napkins" that these women are talking about. The next conversation was trying to get "sanitary napkins" that were not old school diaper-like. Auntie Remy was chatting back and forth with the shopgirl and finally after about a 15 minute ordeal that left me feeling like an adolescent school girl again, we left the Pharmacy with "sanitary napkins". And what was the Charming comment? It was actually Charmee which is the name of a pad they carry on the island ( picture to follow when camera is recharged). I was never more annoyed at being a woman than at that moment. Thank you Mother Nature for that lovely detour on an otherwise amazing trip.
