"I take it he found the fuse box."

There's a strange dichotomy at play here in our little world.  It's the tug-of-war between the aspects of Costa Rica that are still part of the developing world and the pervasiveness of technology.  It's the satellite dish on the rusting, corrugated tin roof.  It's the bank that has two ATMs that can give me dollars or colones, but not today because the system is down. 

Take for example the fact that we are keeping this blog.  We obviously have great internet access - wifi in our rented home with the ability to post regularly, send emails and even skype.  In fact, I had a wonderful skype conversation with a friend last night, and today was able to complete a work interview through the same fabulous technology.  At the same time that I was "skyping", a young electrician had come to the house to fix the showers.  An electrician fixing the showers?  Yep.  There are no water heaters here - so if you want a warm shower, you have this heater thing installed right in/on the shower head.  When we arrived, it wasn't working, and we told Jan that it was not an issue - we were fine with the lack of hot water.  But when Greg reached up to move something and it shocked him, we decided that having an electrician make sure we could safely take a cold shower was probably a good idea.

The shower head/water heater

So the electrician came to fix the shower while I was skyping. And when I had to stop my conversation to show him where the fuse box was, I didn't give it a second thought...  until he turned off the power and I lost my internet connection.  When I finally reconnected with the person on the other end of my skype conversation, her response was, "I take it he found the fuse box."

I, for one, love the little inconsistencies. I like being able to surf on-line while my clothes are drying on the line.  Or reading to the kids on the Kindle because the paper copy of the book got wet when the roof was leaking.

It is keeping me on my toes, not letting me take anything for granted, and giving me (and the whole family - I hope) some pretty amazing perspective.