internet update......................

Lisa has been running an English camp for the past couple of weeks at the school where she will be teaching. She has two groups of approximately 20 kids each (older and younger) who come to the camp each day to play games, read books and sing songs, while speaking only English. The camp has been a big success, as evidenced by the fact that each day more kids show up than were there the day before. The mother of one of the boys in the camp somehow communicated to Lisa that her daughter had just returned from America (Ohio) where she had spent the past year as a foreign exchange student. On Sunday, Lisa and I were in town together on a family shopping trip to the bazaar (to buy more clothesline and clothespins), and who should we run into but the mother and daughter. The daughter speaks perfect English, and as a consequence, she immediately became my new best friend. It didn't take me long to enlist her services in my attempt to sort out my internet problems. She agreed to accompany me to the phone company guy to see what the real scoop is on getting DSL service at our home. We arranged to meet today and to visit his office together. Unfortunately, however, I mistakenly decided to wear my new shoes today. Although they are new shoes that I brought from home, I hadn't worn them until today. As I previously mentioned, it is close to 2 miles from our house to my office, and I generally walk back and forth (unless I am able to cajole a ride from some good samaritan). This morning I was about half way when I realized my new shoes were causing blisters on the heels of both of my feet. By the time I got to my office I was in major pain and was barely shuffling my feet as I walked. I would have taken my shoes off and walked barefoot if I didn't have such tender soles (Lisa calls them"baby feet"). As soon as I got to my office I took my shoes off, but when Gvantsa (the daughter) called I was forced to put them back on and shuffle off to meet her. The way I was forced to walk down the street was somewhat embarrassing, but I didn't want to miss the opportunity to get things straight with the phone company. We got there and pushed our way to the front of the crush of people hanging around, and I watched as Gvantsa engaged in an animated conversation with the telephone guy (actually it appears that there is more than one telephone guy, since we were dealing with someone other than the person that I had dealt with before). Soon a question came up that required a phone call to my host mother, and before I knew what was happening she had left her work and joined us in the telephone guy's office. Jumping to the end of the story, I am now told that we CAN get DSL service here. However, it is DSL service that is routed over the "2" exchange, rather than the standard DSL service routed over the "5" exchange (whatever that means). Apparently, only the "2" exchange is available where we live. It appears that "2" exchange DSL is vastly inferior to "5" exchange DSL, but it still is DSL and is supposedly better than dial-up. The down side is that it will be "a month or two" before it can be installed. Using the Georgian multiplier of 3 (used when estimating the actual time of an occurrence vs. the expressed time of the occurrence), it will be from 3 to 6 months before this actually happens (and even then the performance of this connection will be suspect). None-the-less, I am now pleased and satisfied that we have done all that we can do, and I am no longer distressed over the absence of internet access at our home.

P.S. In case you are wondering, one of my co-workers took pity on me and had her husband come to the office with his car and give me a ride home tonight.