Life Without Internet

If there’s one thing that all the great chick flicks of the world have taught us, it’s the fact that “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.”  Well, at the beginning of our adventure, Chad and I proved that this theory doesn’t just apply to ooey-gooey romantic stuff – living without internet for a week nearly drove us crazy.

The internet is one of those things that I always appreciated, but thought I could do without if I needed to.  

After all, information can be found in libraries, communication can be had through the phone or mail.  So, when we started looking for an internet provider a few days after moving in, I was totally comfortable with going a few more days without being connected 24-7.

Surfing the web in a University park

Our apartment is very close to a university campus, so about once a day we would walk to a coffee shop that was always full of college kids, I’d buy a coffee, and we’d mooch off of the free internet for an hour or so.  At home, I’d make a list of the things I had to look up or check or do to make sure that the time at Second Cup was spent efficiently.

Around Canadian Thanksgiving, for example, I would look up tips for cooking a turkey, pros and cons for baking him from frozen, etc, and Chad would answer e-mails from students and professors back at ISU.

Not having internet at the apartment was making us a little restless.  Every time we were curious about something or wanted to look up directions, we would wish we had a smartphone or internet.  Second Cup was becoming less and less reliable, since the students were slowly taking over and we would often walk by without a place to sit.  We soon tried different places within walking distance.  One was a park in front of a University building where we were able to get internet access for one day, then were locked out every other time we tried.

We also did not have a Canadian phone, so setting up our internet was a challenge.  I finally bought a silly little flip phone that is $0.75/month + loaded minutes, which I had to set up on the internet in the park that day.

We finally have internet!

Once we had a phone, things went more smoothly with the internet.  We called and called and called the same company, but they were being really slow.  They, like an apartment company and insurance company before them, refused us service because we are not Canadian, but were trying to “see what they could do.”  Finally we called a different company and they came the next day to install our internet.

After the guy came and installed it on Thanksgiving Day

Now, though I’m very behind, I am able to update you on our lives here. Chad is able to work on his thesis and consistently communicate with his professors and students.  We can FaceTime and Skype our friends back home, listen to Cyclone Football, share photos, and look up directions.  I am able to download and print important documents for school and learn about this great city.  Life without internet wasn’t comfortable, but it sure helped us appreciate all these things a little bit more.