The first time my eighty-something year old grandmother saw Keith and I via Skype video chat, she couldn’t believe it.
“It’s a miracle!” she exclaimed. “How much is this costing you?”
“It’s free, grandma.”
“No!”
“Really. And when we call you at home, it’s just a few dollars a month.”
It took about five months of calls before she finally stopped asking how much we were paying and promising to pay us back for the calls when we got home. So far her tab is a whopping $0.03!
Thanks to the miracle of Skype, we’ve been able to watch our niece play from Istanbul, wish the entire family a Merry Christmas face to face from the beaches in Thailand, and show off our tans in Cambodia while friends freeze in yet another snowstorm back home. With Facebook and Twitter, we can keep up with the latest news from our friends, see pictures of their babies growing up and even stay up to date on the actions of the Philadelphia Office of Sustainability. And with text messaging, we’ve seen pictures of our hours-old nephew and have coordinated dinner plans with people we’ve met along the way.
In fact, it seems to us that we spend more time talking to our families now that we’re on the other side of the planet than we did when we were just a few hours’ drive away. Instead of routine conversations like this:
Hi! How are you?
Fine.
What’s new?
Not much.
How’s work?
Same-old same-old.
Ok. Bye!
Bye!
Our conversations run more like this:
Hi! How are you?
Great!
Where are you?
We’re in Siem Reap and we just spent the entire day seeing the most amazing temples and riding around in a tuk-tuk and it’s about 10,000 degrees here and the food is fabulous and our tour guide was telling us about life under the Khmer Rouge and…
A highlight of leaving our jobs to travel was turning in our blackberries, shutting off our cell phones and severing the electronic ties that kept us tethered to the world of constant communication. Now nothing rings, vibrates, flashes or plays music to demand our immediate attention. We determine where and when we connect, and after nearly five months on the road, we truly appreciate having the ability to hear a familiar voice or see a familiar face from back home with nothing more than a laptop and a decent wifi connection.
We might be on the other side of the world but our friends and families know more about our daily lives now than they could even imagine about our lives in Philadelphia. Funny how being so far away has made us so much closer to the people we love at home.
How do you stay connected when you travel? How has technology changed the way you communicate with friends and family back home?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This is so, so true!
I’m glad you and Amy are able to find good wifi connections for your readers and of course for your friends & family who I’m sure miss you all dearly!!!
People can definitely take being in close proximity for granted : )
Love that you guys posted about the Internet miracle. It is so, so true. We ended up heading back to the US much earlier than we expected because of a family emergency and were literally on a plane from Bangkok to the US in 10 hours after we heard the bad news because we were able to talk to our families and book flights all via the Internet. Thank you, Al Gore.