The day the electronics died...

So about every two weeks or so, I’ve had just about enough of my remote site and go into Chota with my other peace corps friends for a weekend full of good food, English, and best of all internet. But this weekend, little did we know, things would be a bit different.

It started first with the cell phone signal. Usually I have pretty good signal in my site, but for some reason I didn’t have any on Friday. I thought it was just a fluke, so I didn’t start to worry until I got to Chota and I still didn’t have signal. Didn’t think it was a big deal until I realized that without cell phones, there was no way to find out where my friend was. So decided to go to the restaurant we always go to and just play on the internet until she gets there.

So we go to our restaurant and find out…no internet. Without cell phone signal, the internet doesn’t appear to work. So that wasn’t the greatest news, but I figured people would be working to get the signal back in no time right? Then my friend Barbara, who finally found us at the restaurant, reminds me that “Annie, we aren’t in America. This is Peru.” Which means sometimes things don’t get fixed so quickly…But no sweat, I thought. At least we can still watch a movie or something on my computer, but no…here comes the kicker.

We find out that on Saturday, the city of Chota was planning a black-out to do some maintenance on the electricity. So there you go folks: no cell phone, no internet, and no electricity. It’s almost as if I was back at my site. Ha.

So what did we do? We went and played basketball with some friends and their host family and then went over to their house for some good ol’ “Jenga” and lunch. Turns out that without phones, internet, and electricity, we actually had a pretty fun day. So when the electricity finally turned back on and cell phone signal came back, we weren’t so desperate to run back to it all.

So lesson learned? Life still happens without electronics, and it’s not all that bad. But do I still love cell phones, internet, and electricity? With my whole heart, yes.