These are the words I have seen every day, 100's of times a day - for about three weeks now. Its GMAIL. I don't know what it in the world is going on, but I just can not SEND out any email messages. I can receive your messages, but just can not send any back. STILL WAITING (to send), STILL LOADING, OOPS, ERROR. EVERY DAY! I was giving Zimbabwe a few days to catch up, get back to normal, try to fix itself, but it just never did. I finally decided yesterday to just open a new email account, so I tried yahoo. Well, I am pretty sure it is connected to google (aren't all things?), and guess what...did the same thing. Wouldn't send a message. So, I said screw it, I will open another email account, not connected to google, and I tried hotmail. I did it, I opened a hotmail account, I sent an email faster than I could say - still waiting, and finally I had a deep sigh a relief. This was of course until my Internet did not work ALL day yesterday!! Ergh!
I could of course communicate through facebook or like now, this blog- but not all people use facebook (surprisingly)- ha, The blog- well, as you may or may not know about the blog; each one is thought out, carefully designed with just the right amount of pictures, covering every area and remember I still have- oh at least 6 blogs waiting to be sent as we speak. It is still of course, waiting on the right pictures, waiting for them to be picked and downsized properly and then trying to upload to the site (to anywhere really) and getting yet another ERROR message with the box "x", UPLOAD FAILED. Anyway, my point is that I didn't really want to resort ONLY to this just to communicate with my family and friends.
Its almost 2013!!!
As you can see by far THE most frustrating thing about living in the third world is....lack of technology. However, if you could see the amount of people with iphones here (at the cost of around $800 - $1000 each) - you would go crazy. So really, are they really lacking in technology here? And dont even get me started on my supposedly new iphone I bought at the apple store in the US this summer. Its locked, its frozen, it wont restore and go figure, no one hear can figure out how to fix it.
Again, Fun times.
But wait, not finished. So I can still get on Gmail just fine- see messages and sometimes, just sometimes, after closing, re-opening, and closing again...I can finally get one sent message. Its crazy! So, yesterday I get online to finally catch up on things on my new hotmail account. But guess what? For some strange FREAKING reason, hotmail will not even open. Nope, cant even go to
www.hotmail.com. Yes, at this point- Im crying. I mean, it had only been one day, I thought I was progressing. Unfortunately, the answer was no. And then, 30 minutes later...that little yellow triangle appeared in my bottom right window- you know, the one with the ! in it. oh, the joys. This lasted the whole day.
So, as you may or may not of noticed, I have not ONLY been out of touch due to this MINOR flaw in the day to day technologies of living in Zim, but I have also been dealing with a month of sick kids and planning our family trip to Europe for Christmas. What are you talking about... a family Christmas trip to Europe? I know...life is horrible for us, right? ha Go ahead, Poor Rhodes Family. Ha And just when you were starting to feel bad for me, right?
So while TRYING to plan this R&R Christmas trip what we all must remember is that it is still the State Department and trying to get tickets issued promptly is not their strong suit. We cant do anything without their approval. So we waited for that and waited some more. And as you can imagine- trying to plan a trip to Europe, over the busiest time of year, with no plane tickets, means I can not confirm any hotels- which equals... super super frustrating.
During this time, I was experiencing "Still Waiting" from Gmail, I was experiencing UNAVAILABLE from almost ANY ski resort in Austria possible. I mean I am looking over the week of Christmas. Either that, or just simply no reply. Or better yet, I would get a reply from someone about a resort...but could NOT REPLY back. I worked on this for at least a month FIRST, as with no ski resort, meant a whole new schedule and with no ski resort date, meant we couldn't plan the rest or our trip. OK, I get it- life could be worse, right? I heard you the last time. I am planning a Christmas trip to Europe with my family and we are going skiing. I HEAR YOU! It is certainly NOTHING to complain it...but remember, I am venting about my Internet frustrations, not our amazing vacation we have planned. Ha! :)
So, at the end of the day- I am beyond thankful things are finally falling into place for the trip. We finally got our plane tickets...YESTERDAY, a month before we are supposed to leave, we have a ski week in Austria booked and planned and I still need to book our hotels for the beginning of our trip in Germany (we are doing the fun German Christmas Markets- so excited!) and the end of our trip in Prague. Again, I know things could be worse. I still have no working email, but I have this blog and once life gets back to normal, the kids get over their sicknesses, which finally seems to be on the mend (missing about 15 days of school combined), I will then finally get to tell you about all of that, the fun stuff we have been up to, including our fun trip to the Eastern Highlands in Zimbabwe. This is where Chase was covered head to toe in a freak rash while hiking in the forest (while we were staying at a resort in the middle of nowhere with no doctors, etc.). Oh yes, Fun Times!!! We all ended up OK of course, Chase is doing just fine. :) We have Marine Ball this weekend as well as three going away parties for friends, Thanksgiving and Chase's first school play. And yes, we are excited about Christmas and oh yeah ...
We are still anxiously WAITING to hear about our next post!
Love you all!
A fun family pic from our trip to the Eastern Highlands. :)
