Facebook vs Facetime

Back home I’m an avid user of Facebook to keep in touch with many friends all over the world and I really enjoy it. However, that said, I’ve currently gone 3 days without any electronic communication (despite my best efforts today to secure a phone number…another story for another time). Typically, this would be driving me crazy making me feel so disconnected with the world as I believe it did when I first arrived in Nigeria. Typically, I check my email no fewer than 3 times a day and really, each evening when I’m home, I’m in a constant state of checking email and Facebook continuously while attempting to also be electronically productive. Most of this is done to maintain relationships to the people that are important to me. After checking the Facebook newsfeed for the 4th time that night it has gone from relationship maintenance to obsessive and time wasting.

Today, I got face time with so many great people from Iowa team members, my former principal and bookkeeper from my Nigerian school, one of my best friends in the world Helen John and her fabulous sisters, co-worker and friend Asper stopped by. I was able to rekindle old relationships with shopkeepers and vendors that I’d frequented here and have dinner with great friend Ezekiel and see his family. It was non-stop with visitors, random encounters and meeting new people through working together. I loved it! Granted, an outdoor, market-type society makes it easier to stop and chat with people compared with the US where you go from your isolated, air conditioned car to your isolated, air conditioned house. Being back here is rekindling my desire to try to get more unplanned, casual face time than Facebook time in my next chapter of life in El Salvador.