No Espanola/No English

I had another surreal experience in Chile। Our internet wasn’t working therefore Pete had to call the phone company to request assistance. As usual the service was unable to send anyone to the house for a few days therefore Pete was unsure of when they would actually arrive. Well of course they came while Pete was at work and as you all know my Spanish is truly limited to a few words. I was able to point to the computer and tell the tech person that it wasn’t working. He unplugged a few things, call the office and reset the service. As he was walking upstairs to phone in the completion of his visit I realized that the connection to my work link was lost. This was where all of my issues had begun a few days back and I ran up the stairs to tell him that I needed his assistance again.

Right then I realized that I had no way to communicate my problem effectively। I motioned for the guy to stay and quickly called Pete at work. Unfortunately, Pete was in a big meeting and was unable to talk. I begged him to stay on the phone long enough to explain the majority of the issue. Pete spoke briefly to the tech guy and then hung up the phone. I motioned for the guy to follow me back to my office and he asked me to restart my computer. As I did this the silence began to put me into a state of panic. What was I going to do? How was I going to show him that my connection was not working.

I absolutely hated the silence and as the sweat was starting to roll down my neck I came up with a bright idea. I opened up my home laptop and typed in Google Translate. I then typed out a message that was translated into Spanish so that the service tech could read it. He smiled at me a little funny and then typed a return message so that I could read it in English. It turns out that we communicated like this for about 45 minutes and by the time he left my connection was working again. Whew!