Even though we are such the vagabonds, we do miss our family and friends. Thank God for the technology, I don’t know what we would have done without it! Here’re the ways we keep our personal relationships alive:
- Skype. It’s free, it’s simple, it works well. Everyone has it. We have dinners with my brother who lives in Seoul. We gossip with our Russian uncles and aunties about who married whom. We play videogames and watch funny Youtube clips with our friends. In a pinch, we send messages via Skype. The only problem is when we get the time difference wrong and get these 4 a.m. calls… Yeah… I digress.
- Facebook. Thanks to it, I can watch my friends’ kids grow in real time. That alone is worth sifting through raging political statements and silly calls for liking this picture of a puppy if you love your mom.
- E-mail. We have a few friends – I shall call them stalwarts – who do not use Facebook and do not use Skype. Or just prefer writing longer updates. So we e-mail each other which is kind of nice because we get longer updates and also some pics if we are lucky.
- Text. Whatsapp is a very popular app which we use for texting – works well for business: quick, efficient, free.
- We do mail analog postcards occasionally. It feels nice to receive or to send an old-fashioned card. But it’s usually quite complicated: find and buy the cards, find time to write and address them, find a postoffice, explain to someone in French or Turkish that you are trying to mail these to US. Still, definitely worth the effort.
Speaking of keeping in touch, since this blog receive thousands of comments, nearly all of them are spam, if you need to get in touch with us, you can use any of the above. Or the contact us form on this site. My gmail is elle3000. So you can just e-mail us to elle3000<at>gmail.com.
Happy Holidays!