Communicating with Home during Study Abroad

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Before going abroad, make sure to decide with your family and friends how to communicate with them while you're abroad. You can choose between regular postal delivery (the snails are slower overseas), telephone, or e-mail. Each has its own merits and some disadvantages, and one means may be more available to you than others.

Snail mail

As you probably have already discovered as a college student, not much is better than walking to your mailbox and finding a card or letter there amongst all the bills. Receiving mail via postal delivery becomes even more cherished and exciting when you're abroad!

Letters are economical. They cost less than phone calls, and you can write them from anywhere. If you're not someone who writes pages and pages, consider postcards! They're easy to write and can be written while at a park or cafe, on a train, or from your hostel bed while on the road. Letters and postcards also tend to be more personal and can make great keepsakes. My grandmother and parents, for example, collected all the postcards I sent while I was abroad, chronicling my adventures in Ireland and the rest of Europe.

Pack your address book! If you don't already have one (because you keep everything in your PDA or on your computer), make one before you leave. You may even want to make a photocopy of your address book and keep it separate from the original, just in case you lose it.

To help guarantee that you receive letters while you're away, give your friends and family self-addressed, stamped (with the proper amount of postage) envelopes before you leave.

Of course, the major downside to letter writing is that snail mail is just as the name implies: slow. Sending letters back and forth can take a long time, usually more than a week for an airmail letter to get to you from the States. International postage is more expensive than domestic postage, but if you limit it to letters or postcards, you won't break the bank.

Mailing packages while abroad is expensive and unwise. Surface mail is less expensive than airmail, but when using either of them, be sure to

• Allow plenty of time for delivery.
• Expect your package to be opened and searched during its journey.
• Avoid sending send money or valuables.

In some places, it's smart to avoid receiving packages altogether. The fact of the matter is that not everyone is honest. Your package may be searched and something stolen from it in the process. And if your package just "disappears," it usually can't be tracked once it leaves the U.S. unless you use a not-so-fast and very expensive international express service.

Phoning home

Nothing, I repeat, nothing is like a phone call home when you're studying abroad. But my Sunday afternoon phone calls to home were what made me the most homesick when I was abroad. In fact, when I arrived in my host country, I called to let my parents know that I had arrived safely, but then I instituted a two-week moratorium on phone calls to home, so that I could adjust and cut down on homesickness.

Besides, phone calls can be quite expensive while you're abroad — for you and for friends and family who may be calling you. In most foreign countries, domestic and international phone calls are very expensive, and phone bills are not itemized. Phone service, meanwhile, may be poor with frequent static, echoes, delays, and disconnections.

You may find that where you're staying doesn't have any phone access at all, or you may have to share a public phone with an entire dorm of students. So expect restricted access to a phone while abroad.