Red Tent Sisters

During my first week in South Korea I attended an orientation session on "how to teach conversational English and how to adapt to Korean culture". During one class the facilitator was showing us how to use a word search engine ... enter a word and words that are most often used with the first word will appear. For example, enter smile and whimsical, wry, happy etc. comes up. After some group work the facilitator said "I looked up woman and it's not the greatest corresponding words but look up here on the screen and you can see what came up", and he rattled off a few words. Turns out that menstruating was one of the words ... not surprising since a large part of the female population, especially those people commonly referred to as women, are menstruators. An outgoing, very loud young woman a few rows behind me said "ewww gross". EXCUSE ME??!! Not as loud as her but loud enough that others around me could hear I said "all women do it, why is it gross?!" Still in shock and still shaking my head I sarcastically said to my pair of female table mates "I'm menstruating - does that make me gross? Should i go to my room and stay there?" Saying that makes obvious how ridiculous the first woman's comment was. The funny/interesting/unfortunate thing is that probably more people had a reaction like hers rather than a reaction like mine. Sheesh. Cheers, E.