To get to the net

Internet. *sigh,* something we desperately rely on, but rarely know if it will be reliable! There are two internet cafes within walking distance from my house. I don´t know how many times or how much money I have given them to support keeping their doors open, with no service provided to me. What do I mean by that? I have gone, and sat on the internet for minutes at a time and the pages I need to get to, won´t even open. When I leave, I still have to pay!! Paying to waste precious time! What a concept? So to get to the internet that is USUALLY reliable, is quite a trip. I either have to pay a little over a dollar and taxi a motorcar in, or Nelton drops me off and takes the girls to the local plaza. But to get here isn´t as easy as it sounds! Currently, the new mayor has signed a project to redo all the sewage in Iquitos so that it will be processed before being dumped back into the Amazon. While I am excited about this project, I couldn´t be less thrilled with their system of doing it. There is no rymthe or reason to how they are tearing up the roads. There are a lot of one ways in this city and it feels like they pick any number of roads at random to tear up and close down. Then when the work is done, they could take forever to pave and open it up again! Yesterday, we came to the net one way, and on the way home a road we came in on was torn up and we had to be detoured again. To make things more interesting, there are no signs indicating what is torn up or where to be detoured to. You could detour one way, only to get to the end of that road and find that it´s closed too. It is frustrating. Sometimes there are signs, but they aren´t true! And the dust and dirt. You can´t go out without coming home to take a shower to wash the filth off. Because our vehiles are open (motorcycle or motorcar) popping out of a leasure stroll or even shopping trip is anything buy relaxing. If you forget eye protection, your eyes will be dried out quickly from the dust. So then, you get to the ¨good net¨ and spend the money to get your ticket for wifi... sometimes it doesn´t even work. Yesterday, I paid for my hour, but then got knocked off and spent the hour without even having connection. Sometimes you think you sent and e-mail and after a week or so without a response, you send a follow-up e-mail only to find that your message never went through! Same with blogging, I sometimes invest time to write it, and when I go to post I get a message that says there is an unknown error! Indeed, internet is anything but relaxing here. Time flies, money spent, then I hear a little girl running to the back of the cafe to find me (that´s where wifi is set up), ¨MOMMY!!!!¨ Nelton is back, kids are done playing and they are ready to go. Sometimes it´s a relief, had a good connection, got work done, and I can pack it up and go home. Other times, it´s a bummer, cause I spent the time and money and have nothing to show for it. Either way, we make our way back to the dusty streets and start the maze home. And that´s what it take to check e-mail. I won´t take the time to edit this, just post it, cause I´m hoping I will have enough bars to post before that baby girl comes running to find me. And this is what has come up-- ¨An error occurred while trying to save or publish your post. Please try again. Ignore warning ¨ Here´s to trying again! I just remembered why I don´t blog much! (But I´m making an effort to do better)