Keeping in touch; University Expat Teens Series FIVE

Everyone knows how to use facebook, email, skype and all other forms of online communication to keep in touch with one another. Right?

It’s a tendency associated with youth; we all know how to use them, or quickly pick up the skills along the way, just to update statuses or show a friend the new tie you bought. International students have developed a technological ‘knack’ for these programs, perhaps more so than others, and use them frequently to catch up with family and friends around the world.

This is, however, not necessarily the case for our local friends- a hall mate recently announced she had to ‘download Skype and figure out how to use it’ so she could see the new couch her parents had bought.

Unfortunately, as any international student knows, time difference can be a real hindrance to these communications, especially when you want to see that new couch. Some of us may have a simple 12 hours difference, allowing for easy ‘skype dates’, whilst others have more complex schedules causing conflict on either end, making it that much harder to remain close whilst so far away

And yet International students use these means as the cheapest form of communication and homesickness remedies- something we all experience, especially over holiday times.

So in the recent times of Thanks for Thanksgiving, I’d like to thank technology for letting me be able to keep in touch with my family and friends all over the world. It isn’t always easy but these means are a good comfort, decreasing the feeling of constantly missing out and actually increasing my enjoyment of being here at university- I was pretty happy I missed out on monsoon rains for the first time in years when I saw the flooding over Skype!