Things are looking up for this Yankee

My Spanish is improving! I can feel it happening (well, some days). Today just happens to be one of those days here is way:

I have posted this blog using our brand new Internet! It only took about 3 weeks and hours of frustrating phone calls to get it but we have it non-the less. Here is what happened… we were at our landladies’ house signing the contract and they told us all we had to do to get Internet was to call this number and we would have Internet in no time. Wow that sounds so easy. Looking back I now see how naive we were; Things in this country are neither fast nor easy for us Yankees (they say it shhhaaankees here).

 Anyway, I started calling the Internet Company, fumbling my way through, explaining that we are the new renters and we don’t want cable and we want to add Internet. Que fácil no? Well…

Just as soon as I felt like I was getting somewhere, they would transfer my call and I would be on hold, waiting and waiting, and then all of a sudden, it would say, “I’m sorry everyone is busy now. Goodbye.” Now repeat this sequence of events 6 to 10 times. It was like talking to Verizon times 100 thousand.  

Now you have an inkling of how I felt.

One thing I have noticed in hindsight:

Now usually I hate it when people speak to me in English. I want to tell them, “Hey I am here in YOUR country to learn YOUR language, if you want to speak English go to an English speaking country.” Time and time again people hear my accent and want to “try out their English”

In this case I would not have minded if someone spoke to me in English. I would have welcomed it! But do you think anyone spoke English at Fibertel? Not one. I started out every conversation with them like so… “I’m sorry I don’t speak Spanish very well, do you speak English?” They would reply to me no or try to “transfer” me to someone, in which the call was always lost. Umm interesting.

Anyway the moral to this story is go to the actual Fibertel store, because I found one and in no time I had an appointment for a guy to come and install the Internet. No one could hang up on me there! They told me anywhere between 8AM to 2PM someone would be by. Well at 2:30 I get a phone call and they told me that sorry no one has been by, but stick around until 5 and someone will come. Greeaaat sure I can just hang around my house all day long!

Finally someone came… he came and said, “I’m here to install the cable.” What? I said very clearly (at least I thought it was clear) that we DIDN’T want cable. Haha And what’s more, there are apparently two types of wireless Internet, one for PCs and one for laptops. Of course the guy had the one for PCs.

Well back to the Fibertel store I go and set up ANOTHER appointment. The next set of guys come and have the correct wireless. But one more catch, when I ask if they could set up the password for us, the told me “no we can’t, but all you have to call this number to set up a password”…  I think I will forgo this “simple” task.

I am counting the little things here. Getting Internet: one point for Jenna on her odyssey to learn Spanish.