To everyone has been waiting and wondering where I’ve been…
Don’t worry! I’m here! I’m still safe! Life here has been really crazy hectic recently. Aside from spending all my extra time trying to get to know this crazy city I live in, I’ve also added another English class to my day. Before, I just taught a beginner level class from 6-7 in the evening but I’ve since added an advanced level class from 8-9. It’s been really great so far as it’s a class with three or four people who speak English pretty well and are just looking for practice in conversation. Me being anthropologically minded, I have really enjoyed talking to them about Peru and why it is the way it is.
But I did want to write a quick post to tell everyone that all is still well… better than expected really! I have had a horrible time with the computers down here as we do not have internet access in the house so we have to go to internet cafes. No offense to Peru, but it’s not exactly the technology capital of the world so I am currently writing on an outdated PC with Windows 98 and an English keyboard that’s somehow formated to the Spanish alphabet. Anyone who has traveled in a Spanish-speaking country can empathize then, that finding the aprostrophe key is a commitment and there’s no hope in fighting the odd accent mark that gets thrown atop a letter.
Being technologically challenged, you can imagine loading pictures onto the website has been an awfully frustrating task. For one, the internet connection is subpar then try using the 20 computers in an internet cafe on the same connection with half the people playing those blasted online fantasy games and others trying to download music. It makes the connection slower than molasses requiring about 2 hours to load 14 pictures onto the website.
After wasting 3 hours last Sunday and returning to the house near to tears, I started mentioning to the people in the house that I was looking to rent a laptop until Michael brings my sweet little Mac to me in December. Miraculously, it turns out my house mate Dennis has a computer that he rarely uses and said I could use it whenever I wanted. So… the writing will begin again soon! And I anticipate the quality of writing to be higher also as I will be writing when the desire strikes me from the comfort of my own home rather than when I’m forced to because I don’t want want to spend any more time in the loud, slow internet cafe than necessary =)
I still don’t know what to do about the pictures but if I have to sit here for 2 hours to load 14 pictures… I’ll do it! This is especially because Andy and I found a photo developer that can digitize the kids’ photos at a wonderfully affordable rate. So keep an eye out for progress on the photo project and I vow to write more about it soon as there are a lot of really exciting details!