Technology

We have become so used to living with the technology that we have in our day to day lives, that it is difficult to 'live' without it sometimes...

When we sent Rebekah off to college at Niagara University in Niagara, NY, we had cell phones and texting in order to keep in touch.  I have to admit we had the ability to skype, but I am not very technologically advanced and didn't 'know' how to do it, so I don't think we ever skyped with her (possibly dad did a time or two).

When we sent Amanda off to BYU-Hawaii we took advantage of this technology (we had a newer computer and it was easier for me to click on the link and use it).  We began skyping every Sunday afternoon.  We missed very few times over the two years she spent at BYU-H.  Liam definitely looked forward to it.  Because of our weekly skype dates, we didn't call quite as often.

Well, we sent Amanda off to teach English in Ukraine last week.  I drove her up to Nashville on Thursday, the night before, and we stayed at Rebekah's place that night.  It was nice to be able to wake up at 6 am, to get her to the airport by 7:45, rather than having to drive clear from home so early in the morning!!! (Thank you Rebekah for making that easier on us. :)

Friday morning we took Amanda to the Nashville airport and she was on her way.  I dropped Rebekah back at her apartment (about 15 min's away), and drove back home to Alabama, to get on with my day (picking Marissa up from school and driving to physical therapy).

Throughout the day we would see updates, Amanda no longer had telephone service and text, but she could use her phone to update on facebook when she had Wifi.  We knew she had made it to Chicago and that she'd met up with other 'teachers' that were heading to Ukraine to teach English with her.  We saw messages while she was in Frankfurt Germany at the airport waiting for their final flight.  Then we didn't get any more messages...

Saturday night when we went to bed, Bill and I were talking and it occurred to me that I had just sent my child off to a foreign country and I had absolutely NO contact information for her!* Yikes!  What were we thinking?!?!?! ;)  Bill got on facebook and looked up Amanda's 'friends' and tried to figure out who might be with the Ukraine 1 group that left two weeks before. (Amanda is with the Ukraine 2 group - they teach at different schools in different area's of Kiev, Ukraine).    He found someone based on the pictures they had posted from Ukraine and messaged them to ask if they'd heard from the 2nd group and if they'd arrived in Ukraine.  They sent a message back saying that they were sure they had arrived fine and were just getting settled in for the night.

*I'm sure if we had needed to we could have figured out information and contacted the people in charge of the program that she went with.

The next day Amanda got wifi at her place where she's living while she's in Ukraine, and she posted on Facebook that she was fine, settled, liked her room mate and liked Ukraine.  I definitely felt a whole lot better once I knew her status.

Which brings me back to the point of this post.  

                                             *****TECHNOLOGY*****   

We have become so used to being able to reach out, instantly, and get in contact with people, our kids, family, friends, etc. that it didn't even occur to me to get contact info of anyone or anything in order to be able to find out about her safety, status, etc.  

I also noticed it with Marissa Friday night as well.  She had asked to attend the high school football game.  It was a big game, the two teams from Madison City (we were all the same school until last year when we got a second high school in town, and our school split) were playing each other.  Everyone has friends at both schools.  I allowed her to attend the game, where she was going to 'meet up' with friends to hang out with.  She was supposed to call/message me from one of their phones (since she didn't have a phone of her own), and let me know a number of someone she was going to be with, so that I had contact info for her.  I didn't make plans ahead of time, for a meet up point, after the game or anything, I was counting on her calling me.  She had several different friends she 'hung out with' during the game, and the original 'friend' she got together with was going to have to leave early, so she hadn't bothered to call me from her phone since it wouldn't have been available to contact her later... Then her other friends phone battery was dying, so she didn't contact me from that phone either...

Now, I have to admit, that perhaps, if Marissa had never had the seizures, over the past year, and particularly the previous week, and she had been week and wobbily and using forearm crutches earlier in the week, I might not have had that little bit of extra fear/worry/concern about her.  I knew that ultimately both of her sisters were at the game, and there were sure to be many other many others friends and neighbors in attendance at the game as well, and IF something had happened to her while there, someone would undoubtedly see her, recognize her, etc... but my thinking needs to change!  I know Marissa just wants to be 'normal' (and posts about Marissa are a whole complete blog post that I NEED to write up!), but the reality is we do have a 'new reality' that we have to take into consideration.  I should have definitely made more concrete 'plans' or back up plans for contacting her, and we basically agreed afterward that she will not 'meet up' with friends at the game anymore, she will only get to attend a game if the friends go to the game together and stay together, etc...

Back to the technology issues again.  Years ago we all knew probably half a dozen phone numbers at least.  We knew our home phone number, our best friend's phone number, possibly grandparents phone number, the neighbor, etc... Now days, we don't NEED to remember things like phone numbers. If you're like me, we are lucky to know and remember two or three phone numbers. Our own cell, our home and our spouse's number, perhaps the office number...   What do we count on? We just look up anything we want to know on our cell phone, and we don't look it up by the number, we look it up by name or we have it on speed dial.  I know that whenever my phone battery is about to die, I panic a little bit because I will not have the ability to contact anyone for any reason, because I won't know their number!!!  I don't even have a current hard copy/paper copy of the Ward list of the people in our church congregation.  That used to be posted near the phone at all times and a list friends and family as well.

Technology is wonderful, but sometimes I think we ought to still depend on some of the old fashioned ways of doing things, like making plans, etc...

That being said, today we got to Skype with Amanda in Ukraine!  Yay!!!  She had such a big smile on her face when we signed on!  It was GOOD to see her!  She has had a very long, very busy week.  She started teaching two days after arriving in country. she leaves her apartment at 7:30 am to travel to the school, teaches until 1 pm. and then hasn't returned back home until 9-10:30 pm at night all week.  She spends the whole afternoon and evening writing up lesson plans and planning for her classes.

She told us of some of her fun adventures, like even trying to order food, in a foreign language... when you can't even read the menu. :) I can't wait to read more of her blogs.  Hopefully she'll have more time to blog this week. She has her basic lesson plan ideas written out for the next bit, so she may get a little more down time.

You can keep track of her goings on here:
http://southernbelleineurope.blogspot.com/