“The Skins are in first place right now,” my Dad’s voice echoed through a basic Ecuadorian cell phone.

Standing at the top of a hill, with one hand pressed against the bark of a tree, I could get sparse service to call home.

It was a steep, twenty-minute hike following an old barbed wire fence past grazing cattle to reach the top. Red ants, about the length of a nickel, carried leaves up and down the tree and over my fingertips. No person was insight. I gazed over valleys spotted with banana trees under a bluish-grey sky.

It wasn’t until this moment that I realized how much my daily life has changed and how remote the farm really is. We don’t have available phone service, television or Internet. To get to the closest town with these luxuries, you either have to walk two and a half hours to the paved road to catch a ride, or arrange some other alternative mode of transportation…. donkey ride, anyone?

As a person who is slightly obsessed with the Internet and pursuing a career in the media business, I’m shocked how easy it has been to transition into a world without modern technology. Somehow, long chats with new friends from all over the world, evening card games and late-night chocolate making serve as good distractions from the comforts of technology.

And while I wouldn’t mind watching the Redskins sometime, the only games I’m currently concerned with are evening football (soccer, of course) matches in the community. More on soccer in Ecuador soon…