Skype Sundays

Sunset during our pirogue trip in Sine-Saloum

The internet at my house has been going on and off for the past three weeks. At one point, it wasn’t working properly for two weeks. I freaked out at first and would run home hoping that it would be restored! After a couple days, I readjusted to life without the internet and started doing as much work at school as possible. Before anyone starts rolling their eyes about me learning to live without the internet, just know that this post is more about the realities of moving to college, going abroad and otherwise not being home enough.

Many of you know that I am the oldest of five girls. This means that I am the first in many things including being away from my sisters and not having the same old routine that we had. We all know that despite the trouble we gave each other and the headaches that we gave each other and our parents, its great being an Etoka sister! For me, it meant that I had at least four other people who tried to give me a hard time and then would ask me for help. It also meant going to movie nights at Piece Park Elementary School, carnivals and other events when both our parents had to work. When we were home, we were laughing with our parents or telling our dad to tell us about his time in Congo while my sisters ran away not wanting to get into another story time. We have an interesting family to say the least.

When I moved to Connecticut, it was easy to talk to my family on the phone and then we would Skype. My first semester abroad, even with the six hour difference, we managed to talk a couple times a week and we had out Skype Sunday all lined up. In Senegal, we were able to honor that commitment until the internet stopped working. I figured that it would only be a couple days and didn’t think about getting an internet key. I did head over to N’ice cream where they have free Wi-Fi but the noise there made it impossible to talk and it wasn’t safe for me to be out late. I guess that now I need to consider other options and get that internet key or I can hope that the internet company has mercy on me and gets it to work again. After nearly a month without the internet at my house, I have learned that I am not addicted to Facebook or anything like that, but that because even when I am far away from my family and friends in Boise and Hartford, the next best thing to having them near me is being able to communicate on a regular basis especially when there are birthdays to celebrate, track meet results to discuss and Mother Day to thank my mom for all her hard work.