All because of a vase of flowers

Who'd've thought the simple pleasure of a vase of roses on my desk and a gentle breeze through my window could be the source of so much trouble and inconvenience?!

It was a sunny, quiet Saturday afternoon in May and Collin and I were talking about all the places in Bolivia we wanted to visit.  After 8 years in Bolivia, I'd seen very few of the "touristy" places Bolivia has to offer. We were (or at least I was) mourning the sudden, yet also long time coming, demise of our Land Cruiser, trying to figure out how the heck we'd be able to get out and camp now that we were permanently without a car.

Earlier that afternoon, I'd put a small vase of roses on my desk and opened the window so the breeze would blow through.  I love fresh flowers, and living in Bolivia gives me the luxury of buying a fresh bouquet every week.  Often, I'll put a fresh vase full on my desk so I can enjoy them while I work.

Meanwhile, Collin and I continued brainstorming, thinking of all the places we'd like to go.
Sucre to see the ancient dinosaur tracks and indigenous weavings from a nearby town.

Moon Valley (I finally went with my old housemate)

La Paz to show Matias the gondolas and to explore Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) and the Incan trail that starts on a pass high above the 12,000ft city.

 Or Villa Tunari, a 4 hour drive into the jungle, to go whitewater rafting and visit the monkey park.  I was excited, energized by the idea of not being trapped in Cochabamba, despite no longer having our own transportation.

And then I went into my room to check my e-mail, and discovered that the light breeze had become a gust at some point and had knocked the rose vase over.  My computer was sitting in a puddle of water.  As my family well knows, when I'm presented with a stressful situation, I don't handle it well.  I get flustered, impatient, and my voice tends to rise another octave higher.  This time, I felt strangely calm and removed from the potential disaster of losing my computer.  I started sopping up the water, drying the computer as best I could and then used Collin's computer to google all the different tips for drying and saving a wet computer.  I put it in a bag of rice (a trick that worked with my I-pod when it fell into my soaking laundry for an hour), took out the battery and the other removable elements to dry, and waited a week.  When I finally plugged it in, there was a slight flicker on the screen and then nothing.  No noise, no computer parts whirring, no lights, no nothing.  When a Mac computer technician told me what I already knew, that my computer was dead, I resigned myself to being computer-less until I was able to get a new one.  Waking up every morning and not immediately checking the news or my e-mail took a lot of getting used to.

A month and a half later, a friend of a friend finally brought my new computer down (thanks to my mom and dad and savings).  It was strange to suddenly have unfettered access again to the rest of the world, to not need to prioritize the e-mails I needed to send or handwrite my theology homework.  Now, over a year later, I find myself wishing for that month and a half without a computer.  I'm not self-disciplined enough to put a computer restriction on myself (one of the many reasons I still don't have Facebook), but I know how good for my soul it was to be completely disconnected.  And now that we have a new car, I look forward to the future trips I take as a chance to get away from my computer, from the internet,  and just BE.