The Tumultous Tale of Attempting to Acquire Internet.

The morning after Karaoke (26/8), we had a hugely long meeting with all of us FU-BESTers. Dirk, the program director, is probably one of the coolest people ever. He's originally from Holland, then spent 25 years in the US, and now lives and works for FU as our program director. The meeting was boring, logistical stuff, and went from 9-4:30 with an hour long break for food. We did set up our laptops to use the campus internet, which rocks, and is how I was finally able to add pictures and videos to the blog, because my goddamn internet at home is too slow. And now onto the stress of setting up internet:

We got to the media markt and fortunately met a group of people who were also buying their surfsticks, so we just tagged along with them, and bought the right thing. Then, we headed downstairs and purchased the 30Euro package, which is supposed to be a month's worth of internet. According to other people, that is actually a by-bit charge, and it runs out in 2 days. More on that later. Once we got everything, Mo, V and I broke off from the group and started setting it up. It was in German. And once we'd installed it, it kept yelling at us about something, but it was in German, so we didn't understand. After about 2 hours of trying to set it up, we headed to the O2 store (the company who the sim card is from), they told us that since so many people had bought surfsticks that day, it would take a couple hours for the card to get registered. Finally, it was registered - at like midnight - and we could finish setting it up. I entered my code for the 30Euro purchase, and then waited until the next morning for authorization.

I was stoked to have internet, but it was painfully slow. But hey, better than nothing! Then I headed out for the day (campus tour day, 27/8). I came back around midnight hoping to talk to some people from back home, and the goddamn internet wasn't working. At this point, it had been such a crazy few days. I was jetlagged, somethings were really exciting, somethings were insanely stressful, and I was homesick. And now the goddamn internet wasn't working. I stayed up until 5:30 a.m. trying to get it to work, the whole time crying my eyes out. Turns out, for some reason, my 30Euro had already been used up. I had a 5 day free use thing, so I entered one of those codes, and got the internet back. I only have one more day left of those, so we'll see what happens the day after that. This is the toned down version because right now the internet isn't stressing me out (it's so fast on campus!), but let me tell you... getting internet is perhaps the single most stressful thing in the world. I think if it is a pay-by-bit  system, I'll only use it at my apartment once a week, and the rest of the time I'll just use it at school. So if you want to skype with me or something, you should tell me when, and I'll try to be on campus or have it be on the day I'm using internet at home!