Remember the famous line, "what we have here is a failure to communicate?" Well I can surely say that pretty much on a daily basis. I had enough trouble when everyone around me spoke English, now it is just triple bad.
Last week we went for babies parent teacher conference at the school. In Costa Rica the kids get two weeks off school for "little summer". That is supposedly the time when it does not rain as much so everyone can kind of get a little break. Kind of the U.S. equivelant to spring break.
When we went to her meeting the teacher got the calandar down and told us that for these three weeks, and she pointed them out to us, there would be no school. She said something about being out of town and what not.
Over the weekend I started talking to other parents who have kids in school and found out that the kids only have two weeks off, not three. Well low and behold they do not believe in substitute teachers here. And when they say there is not school, they are not lying.
We got up nice and early and got ready for school, just in case the teacher did not communicate effectively. We got to school and the other teachers and parents and students were all there, unfortunately, as we made our way to my daughters closed classroom door! They all gave me the very pitiful look and tried to explain to me that there was no school for her class this week as Nina Laura was out of town.
Now how should I know they were weird enough that one class would not meet and all the others would. That is just freakin weird. Not to mention embarrassing. When I got home my older daughter who had translated the meeting for me asked my why I went to school! Just in case.
Showing posts with label communicate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communicate. Show all posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
Monday, December 15, 2008
COMMUNICATION
One would think with all the new inventions to make it easier to communicate we would be a closer more communicative society. I think though that it is quite the opposite and we have only superficial communication and no real communication. You know the kind where you hang out for an afternoon and bake, or just sit on the porch and shoot the bull.
We have a skype phone in our house so that we can make business calls to the U.S, and around the world. It works ok, unless you both want to talk at the same time, in which case you just have to wait for the darn thing to catch up with real time.
Then we have a cell phone to use here in Costa Rica. Right now our daughter is using it until they get their own line from Ice. We also use that number for our business number.
Of course we have our home phone. That one we rarely use, or get calls on. We are all shocked if someone calls us on it, and especially if we get a voice mail on it. It is very expensive to make international calls on it so we do not use it for that very often.
Can't forget the voip phone. That one has a U.S. number that forwards to our house so that we can get calls from the U.S. and talk to our kids still living there. Our son who is in jail is the victim of a really stupid set up they do in the jails, kind of a racket actually. There is a phone company that takes over the phone lines in the jail and you have to go through them to call out. Well Costa Rica will not accept calls from them, because they do not give Costa Rica enough money, so we have a voip phone.
Then there is the internet. There are days when we don't even have to talk here, we just instant message each other and keep up with what is going on. Pretty funny especially when we are sitting in the same room.
So do we know each other any better, or have any better communication with all of these devices? Of course not, I can't even remember all my numbers half of the time! I much prefer a nice slow afternoon of sitting and talking and watching the people walk by my house, that is the way to really communicate.
We have a skype phone in our house so that we can make business calls to the U.S, and around the world. It works ok, unless you both want to talk at the same time, in which case you just have to wait for the darn thing to catch up with real time.
Then we have a cell phone to use here in Costa Rica. Right now our daughter is using it until they get their own line from Ice. We also use that number for our business number.
Of course we have our home phone. That one we rarely use, or get calls on. We are all shocked if someone calls us on it, and especially if we get a voice mail on it. It is very expensive to make international calls on it so we do not use it for that very often.
Can't forget the voip phone. That one has a U.S. number that forwards to our house so that we can get calls from the U.S. and talk to our kids still living there. Our son who is in jail is the victim of a really stupid set up they do in the jails, kind of a racket actually. There is a phone company that takes over the phone lines in the jail and you have to go through them to call out. Well Costa Rica will not accept calls from them, because they do not give Costa Rica enough money, so we have a voip phone.
Then there is the internet. There are days when we don't even have to talk here, we just instant message each other and keep up with what is going on. Pretty funny especially when we are sitting in the same room.
So do we know each other any better, or have any better communication with all of these devices? Of course not, I can't even remember all my numbers half of the time! I much prefer a nice slow afternoon of sitting and talking and watching the people walk by my house, that is the way to really communicate.
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