So I have finally advanced into the world of the technologically able by getting an iPhone 5 for Christmas (Marco’s present to me!).
Note the “Vodafone NL” at the top (Vodafone being the provider). Woot.
To be clear, I have never had a smartphone (or had a true need for one, honestly). In December 2007 mom and I went to a Verizon store and I purchased a prepaid Samsung phone. It came complete with keys that only had abc, def, etc – which made texting fun (read: slowwww).
But it only cost $15 a month – and technically it only cost $15 a month because that was the minimum amount you needed to add to the account to prevent your surplus from being wiped out and being set back to $0 (which happened to me twice – didn’t trust auto-pay). Otherwise I could have gotten by with less. It was more of an emergency type phone until the last half of 2012 when I began to use it more.
At the moment I am not even sure where I left that old phone in this place. It doesn’t work anymore anyway – there’s no service out here because I didn’t schedule anything with Verizon. But I knew in advance that this would be the case, from my first trip visiting the Netherlands. I can still get access to texts and phone numbers, though.
The main reason I wanted to make a jump to the smartphone is a need for independence – mainly Google Maps. I already have an iTouch which has served me well over the years, but it only has wifi and I need to be able to wander the Hague at will as it’s obviously much larger than Pearl River, New York ever was. Using Marco’s map app on his phone is what proved to me that I could survive in the Hague, as I did when left to my own devices for a week last summer (he had to work that week).
Life in the Hague 