Staying in touch while travelling abroad requires finding the perfect balance between keeping your loved ones in the loop and living in the moment. As a traveler, you can experiment with any or all of the five forms of communication below to deftly accomplish both:
Schedule Phone Calls
Scheduling time to talk on the phone with your loved ones is difficult to coordinate and even more challenging when you’re in different time zones. First, compare the difference in time and schedule a compromise once a week for a quick chat. For example, if you’re a night owl and your parents are morning birds, plan to chat before your bedtime, just as they’re just waking up. With T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi Calling feature, you don’t need an international plan to make/receive calls, access unlimited high-speed data and send/receive messages with a T-Mobile Wi-Fi Calling-capable phone and a Wi-Fi connection from a hotel, restaurant, cafe or library.
Overshare on Social Media
Don’t feel obligated to keep in touch with every family member or friend personally. Instead, use social media to update your larger circle on your whereabouts. Upload photo albums to Facebook or create a private group with close family and friends to overshare pictures. Create stories on Snapchat documenting your daily life abroad including outings, local delicacies and all the sights you’re taking in. If you want to keep your loved ones updated on your exact location, download Swarm by Foursquare and check in to all the restaurants, bars, cafes, hostels, airports and landmarks you visit.
Group Emails
If you’re looking to reach a large audience with minimal effort, compose an email every few days or once a week recapping your daily activities, whereabouts, future plans, recommendations, favorite sites and best restaurants. Bonus points if you add photos or videos to enhance the email. Forward the email to different groups interested in being kept up-to-date with your travel, like immediate family or childhood friends. To alleviate the obligation of responding, highlight in the email that you enjoy living in the moment while traveling, and although any responses and updates are appreciated, you will only be reading and not replying.
Find the Right App
If you enjoy back-and-forth communication while traveling, find the app most effective for your group of friends, extended family or work colleagues. GroupMe is a crowd favorite for sharing photos, videos, GIFs, links and more. All you need is a Wi-Fi connection or access to high-speed data to ping multiple people at once with updates, share your location or send custom emojis. The only drawback is that everyone you’d like to communicate with must have GroupMe downloaded on their smartphones. If you’re looking for an app most likely found on everyone’s phone, Facebook Messenger is the way to go for group calls, video chatting, sharing files and photos.
Send Postcards
Although considered old fashioned by some, sending home postcards is a charming way to keep in touch. A postcard not only gives your reader a snippet of your travels, it’s also a great souvenir to display on their fridge or bulletin board. Checking your mail to find a post card is exciting for the receiver, but also for the sender, who gets to seek out unique postcards for their loved ones from all over the world. Keep in mind that sending mail internationally differs from country to country and doing some prior, country-specific research on guidelines, prices and regulations in addition to traveling with a small address book, will help make the experience less foreign.
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