Going into this yearlong adventure, we knew that one of the hardest parts would be staying in touch with friends and family while abroad. We are missing births, weddings, parties, and normal day-to-day hangouts. It is definitely the most difficult part of this for us. We can’t imagine what it would have been like before technology made these things all possible. We wanted to share a few tricks that we have to keep us connected.
Our Six Simple Methods for Staying in Touch while Abroad
1. FaceTime
This little technological advance has made the distance easier to work with. We are able to catch up with our friends over coffee from opposite sides of the planet once a month or so. We can talk to their littles, see their faces and hear their voices. We are able to show our parents around the places we are staying and meet our niece’s new puppy.
2. Instagram
We use Instagram for daily updates. It’s the easiest place for us to share the things we are doing and seeing every day on the road. We love being able to add polls to our story (like the most recent one about Top Gun thoughts) and it’s an easy way for people to ask questions. We also get a lot of travel advice from the people we follow. We’ve made a few amazing connections this way.
Follow us here if you don’t yet.
3. This Website
This website has been a project to work on while we are traveling, and it will be a great place to look back on when we are living normal adult lives again. But one of the reasons we publish posts on this little website is to help us stay connected. We love getting comments and messages from people here.
4. Old Fashioned Snail Mail
I wish we could send all the postcards from all the countries. I love snail mail. But sending mail internationally is a lot more expensive, and we are keeping to a budget. We prioritize the kids and try to get a few postcards off to the nieces and nephews every few countries.
We have gotten a little creative. We mailed a few cards from New Zealand with postcards inside them already addressed, and our wonderful friends stuck stamps on them for us. In Vietnam, our visitors graciously took some postcards home with them and mailed them for us. It’s all about thinking outside the box.
5. A Great Phone Plan
It was important to us to keep at least one consistent phone number. Google Fi was the answer. A SIM card was mailed to us and it took one phone call to have Verizon release the phone number. They work with local cell companies so that anytime we land in a new country, the phone works immediately. It’s $20/month for calls and texts. If you are calling internationally, you pay by the minute, but the only time we’ve had to do that is when our credit card number was stolen and we had to call the bank. On top of that, you pay $10/month per 1 GB until you hit 6 GBs and then it’s free after that. That means a max of $80/month unless you are planning on talking on the phone a lot. We use FaceTime whenever we want to hear anyone’s voice and that doesn’t cost anything.
Use this link to sign up and get $20 off your first month.
6. Compelling Invitations
Throwing out open invitations to our friends and family to come and visit us somewhere is a little more of a long shot. It has worked once, though, with our friends flying all the way to Vietnam to hang out and spend their vacation with us. My mom is also heading to Australia to meet us for her birthday, and we are so excited.
Thank You For Connecting With Us!
So thank you for reading this and following along. It means the world to us. We have the greatest support system and they make it easy to stay in touch while abroad. Every email, text message, FaceTime date and comment makes us so happy and they keep us going.
