Problem 1: The Wi-Fi at our house is dependent on a booster from our neighbor's house. Usually, it's fast and available all over our house, and generally, wonderful! However, it seems to have mood swings every so often and will just STOP working for awhile, and then somehow get over it's issue and reboot and everything's back to normal.
About 2 weeks ago, it stopped working. It hasn't gotten over it's bad mood!
Now, we CAN access internet from our neighbor's router directly, but it requires us to go sit on the cement outside their back wall and even then, it's pretty slow... uploading photos, streaming videos, viewing any website with a lot of graphics, etc, are just not really happening. (So, the umbrella festival blog post I had planned to do two weeks ago has been put off for the duration of that time. Sorry.)
We also can scooter to a coffee shop to access internet if we need to, or go down to the school and try to tap into the Wi-Fi there (which is what I'm doing now), but the regular speed at the school is about similar to sitting on our neighbor's sidewalk, so it's not a much better solution (although it does mean we avoid being giant targets for the mosquitoes!)
Problem 2: The classroom computer has been crashing multiple times a day for about the last 2 weeks as well, and last week, it seemed to have given up the fight. So we went for a week double planning our days, (one plan for if the computer recovered after a crash, and one plan for if it didn't), and now we've been teaching for a week without a computer (I know, I know - people taught without computers for centuries... I get it. Like I said, we're First World 21st Century-ers, though, so this has been an adjustment for us!), and frankly, we've passed the "I'm patient about this" mark! In truth, it wouldn't necessarily be so bad if we knew the computer was going to be out of commission for a week or two, but the not knowing how long it will be until the computer comes back means we're sort of in this "put off that activity/prep/lesson until the computer comes back" and it just keeps dragging on and on! We're hopefully supposed to get our computer back from the computer repair office it was taken to today, but we'll see :)
So, all that to say, these two issues have been a bit of an irritant for us the last few weeks. It's obviously revealing how much we depend on technology, and probably a good reminder for us to NOT depend on it so much... So you can pray for us to learn the lessons God has for us in this situation!
On to a more happy, social note, we've been playing "Pandemic Legacy" with our friends, Jacob and Jonathan from church. Pandemic Legacy is, like, a board game that married a choose your own adventure story and had a marathon of a baby! The basic premise is that the four people who play the game are a team of World Health Organization workers that have to work together to fight against a dangerous epidemic that is threatening the world. Each play through of the game is one month, and we fight the epidemic over a year's time (so, at minimum, 12 rounds of the game). However, after each month is finished (if you don't meet your objectives for that month, you replay that month), new rules come into affect, new characters show up, and it generally causes you to evolve your strategy or lose!
We're on October, so we've almost finished the game, which is fun, but even more fun is the fact that we've really enjoyed getting to know Jacob and Jonathan better. Gabe meets with them every week or two for coffee and dude time, and our game evenings have allowed us to engage in fun conversations about the Bible, historical context of Biblical passages, life in Thailand, etc.
I've also been able to connect with a few ladies here. One friend I meet with for coffee on mornings that Gabe has to be at church early for worship practice. I think I could have cried the first time I met with her, as it was SO NICE to have a coffee date with a friend and just have girl time. As a former multiple-times-a-week coffee-date-making gal, I have missed being able to connect with someone over a latte (or, in this case, a 3oz Marocchino - pretty much 2 shots of espresso with a chocolate bar melted into it... Amazing!). Last week I even made it to a girl's night/valentine-making party with a group of ladies from various ministries and locations in the world that are all here in Thailand to serve God and the people of Thailand. It was an evening of meeting new ladies and rich conversations for me.
Bottom line: God has blessed us with some great opportunities for developing friendships here, and we are grateful for how others have reached out to us and invited us to do life with them!
We SOOOO want to play Pandemic Legacy! Been playing T.I.M.E Stories instead lately (another good game).
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