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Published: November 28th 2012
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The Badly Cut SIM Card
You'd think if you worked somewhere where cutting these things was your job, you might check to make sure you did it right. Oh well, welcome to Panama. :) I started writing my blog yesterday and then forgot to finish. Oops.
Two days ago I was in the process of setting up my phone for a new SIM card. I thought I was going to have to go all the way back to Volcan for the SIM card, but then Nadia informed me that they sell SIM cards at the grocery store down the road. I completely restored my phone and then walked down with her when she got off of work. She came in with me to give me a hand since I didn't necessarily know technical words for SIM cards and such, but when he brought the SIM card, we realized that it was too big. He said something about cutting it, but as we were looking at the size of the gold colored part of the chip, we noticed that the sizing was a little bit different, and Nadia didn't think that it would work. I guess I'm going to Volcan again.
Now it's yesterday, and I set out for Volcan around 1pm, trying to explain to the kids that they couldn't play games in my phone because I had removed "el chip de teléfono" and it didn't work without it. Honestly, I was surprised that without a SIM card I couldn't even use it as an iPod. It was fortunately the first beautiful and clear day that we've had in a while. I walked down to the bus stop, got on the bus, and made it to Volcan without any issues or worries about being on the wrong bus. When I got off the bus I walked straight towards where la tienda de Movistar was located and asked for "un chip de teléfono, pero pequeña (a SIM card, but small). The woman behind the counter said "iPhone?" (pronounced "ee"phone) and I said "sí". She then proceeded to take one of the normal sized SIM cards and put it in a sort of hole-punch like contraption to cut it to the right size. She charged me $1.50 and I put the card in my pocket, excited to have a working phone. I had passed a stall selling pineapples and other fruits on my way to the store, which made me hungry. I stopped at the Paneria again and had a flaky pastry with sugar on top. Then I went into the grocery store and bought a pineapple, and walked out again to go sit and wait for the bus.
While I waited for the bus, a very attractive Latino guy who looked around my age sat next to me on the bench, and then, when the bus came, he sat next to me there too! In general, people take an empty seat, and there tons of empty seats. But he chose to sit next to me. Unlike with Chris though, I didn't look at him and tell him he was attractive. In fact, I didn't look at him at all and just sat there avoiding all eye contact until he got off of the bus. I rode the rest of the way home, hiked up the mountain, and saw another gringa! She was parked outside of Finca Dracula looking at her tires. I found out that she had just bought the car that day and couldn't get the four wheel drive to work. She lives right up the road from me and has been here for a year working with the school! Another friend to speak English with!
I finished the walk up to the Finca Dracula office, and eagerly placed the new SIM card into my phone, only to see the message "no SIM card" show up. I then looked closer at the plastic that she had cut it out of and saw that she had in fact cut off part of the chip itself. Nadia has off on Tuesdays, so only Lidiola (sp?) was here. She only speaks Spanish, but I managed to explain to her that the SIM card wasn't working. She told me that she had an extra one at her house that she could give me, so I asked her if I could walk down to her house with her when she was off to get it. She said yes and asked me if I wanted to get food an fresas con crema with her. We stopped at her house for the card and then continued down into town to get hamburgers that weren't white (which are called "carne"... if you order a hamburguesa, it will be white). She wants to learn English, so were were going through some easy phrases and works that are similar. Then we walked back up towards Finca Dracula and she chatted my ear off the whole time.
I have no clue what she was saying to me.
Usually I use the dictionary on my phone to figure things out, but because I didn't have a chip in it yet, it wasn't functioning. I just used inflections as cues for where I should laugh, where I should nod and where she was asking a question that I needed to answer. When she asked a question, I would ask her to repeat it and then try to figure out what she was saying. I thought it was pretty funny. Tomás passed us walking up the hill and was on his way back down by the time I got to Finca. I stopped him and said "Necesito mas dinero!" (I need more money). I'm supposed to get $200 per month for food, and I'm on month two and only received $100 for the first month. He speaks English and told me he'd bring it tomorrow, but I haven't seen any money yet.
When I got back to Finca, I stopped in to see Jolanis because it was her birthday, then started working on cutting this new chip down to size. I used a box cutter and garden shears, but managed to cut it to the right size and it worked! Now I can text and call people in Panama! I texted Chris and Melissa so that they had my number, and then went back to mi casa.
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