technology

when i think of even the word technology, i can't help but think of the movie Napoleon Dynamite and the part where his brother sings all about technology at his wedding. And about how many times I and my friends watched that movie the year it came out, I'm not sure what that says about me or my friends.


I had a conversation with Gillian last night about how much more technology is at everyone's fingertips in the states. About how it's hard to even have a conversation with someone face to face without them checking their email, sending a text or talking on the phone. I remember thinking it was weird three years ago when I first moved to Peru because it seemed that there weren't any manners about cell phone usage, any where any time. And I thought that that had been different in the states, that someone wouldn't answer the phone while talking to you, but maybe I was wrong or maybe I was just living in my own imagination. Is that something that has changed? I understand the attractiveness of all the new advances in phones, ... but are people also giving their priority over to their phone instead of the person they are physically looking at, without a webcam?  Mind you, we were having this conversation -through skype/her phone- while she was on her way to meet a friend for a movie. But at least we hung up when she got to where she was going. 


All of that kind of confuses me and makes me think that I'm going to have to take a crash course in telephone technology to be able to operate when back in the states. And here I was excited this week because I got a new phone.... and I can plug in a headset and listen to the radio!! That's not to say that Peru doesn't have its own share of smart phones. There are the cheapest a company has to offer that are prepay phones, all the way up to iphones and blackberrys. Actually, finally I don't feel so bad laying my phone down on the table when teaching, bece my students, nearly all businessmen... are all up to date with the latest. 


Recently a funny thing happened in a class when I asked my students to pull out their agendas for an activity in class. As I pulled out my notebook which I had recently written in my own dates and spaces for activities... the girl in my class pulled out her agenda with a popular comic designed all over it, and the guy, the owner of the business, pulled out his Ipad. So as you can see, there are variety and I happened to be at the bottom of the chain on that one! It was comical. And personally, I prefer my notebook, but it may just be because I know how to use it and I can control it. If I need five spaces of notebook paper between weeks, well then I can do that :D  (what's ironic about that situation is that Peruvians have this image/stereotype of Americans that we all are rich..which is why it is important to be careful because you can be taken advantage of based on that stereotype)


I also know some other people, actually... the majority of my students, have three if not four phones. And they all ring, all the time. Between Nextel, Movistar, and Claro, which are all companies in Trujillo - if you run a business chances are you have all three companies, because its too expensive to call someone that has another company. So you need to have a phone in their company to call that person. Bleh. Talk about no room in your pockets. I heard that there's a phone out there that combines all of your chips from the different companies so that you can use it like one phone, but it must not work well yet because I don't see it around. There are still three phones in a row on the desk of my students.