Lost (and Probably Stolen) Phone Saga

Dearly Beloved,

We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of my beautiful Samsung Galaxy Note 8, tragically left behind in a taxi and then likely stolen from said taxi on the night of Saturday, November 16th. The phone was also equipped with a fantastically useful case with a hidden card slot, yet this very case also led to the demise of my bus card and my credit card, as they were of course lost with the phone itself.

I took all the wrong steps in the events preceding and following this completely avoidable tragedy. I'll be the first to admit that I'm an idiot who had no passcode on my phone as well as well as having no "find my phone" capabilities activated. But what was I gonna do? Track down the person who stole my phone and messaged a guy named "luuuiiisss~" telling him that I'm "a half-Latina, half-estadounidense enjoying my time in Las Palmas"? I was really not trying to go full bounty hunter/detective/cop/whatever-mode on some stranger over a phone. Just called the police station every few days to see if a phone had been turned in but alas.

The fun part of this all was that the morning after I loss my phone, my laptop was still broken and my apartment has no clocks in it (not on the microwave, not on the stove, not on the wall, nothing), so I had no way of telling the time until the girl who spent the night on our couch woke up and told me the time and let me use her phone to remotely log out of all my accounts. Including my Google account which I later learned I could have used to track my phone. But again! What was I gonna do, go confront a phone thief? And potentially get MURDERED?? Highly unlikely.

I did actually wait a day or so to lock my credit card because I wanted to see if the thief would make any purchases. He did not, maybe because my hidden card compartment is actually pretty decently hidden. I always knew that having my credit card and bus pass (which I had JUST topped up with 30 euros!) on my phone would someday not go in my favor. But you live and you learn and you go on Amazon and order the exact same phone case because what are the odds you'll lose your phone a second time? We'll see what happens.

My friends and family have all been extremely helpful in letting me use their phones (shoutout to Dani and Cecilia), sending me emergency cash money (shoutout to my mom), helping me buy a replacement phone and laptop (shoutout to Grandpa By), finding out my phone was insured and ordering a new one (shoutout to my dad), and by offering to bring me the new phone when coming to visit me for the holidays (shoutout to Chris). Shoutout to my school as well for offering to let me use of the school laptops (but they couldn't disconnect the charger from the charging box thing).

Also shoutout to the electronics section employee who had naturally blonde hair (not super common here except among German/Scandinavian tourists, so it made my Midwestern self feel very at home) and was so so nice to me when I bought a floor model laptop and the language was set to Basque and she had to use Google Translate to get it out of Basque to factory reset it because Basque is a language isolate so it's not related to any other languages and aside from loanwords it would be impossible to guess which words say what. I feel very bad that I am about to return this laptop after she went through all that trouble but such is life.

My new credit card is on its way, my new phone and my old laptop will be on their way in a month (I have the ones I bought at the electronics section of the supermarket for now, they have a 60 day return window), and my bus card will be ready to be picked up this Thursday. All in all, this adventure could have been a lot worse, and really has been an Important Learning Opportunity for myself. Plus I didn't get murdered and all my phone stuff was backed up so I'm really killing it.

This has been the most interesting and time-consuming thing that has happened to me the whole time I've been here so I made a long blog post about it. I hope to make more long blog posts in the future now that I actually have a laptop to type on (blogging on a phone is Not Ideal). Maybe I'll even try to update the blog weekly!

We'll see.

Happy Thanksgiving Week,

Cassie

"girl with a pearl earring" by johannes vermeer was on my phone case. rip angel.