On coming to the US, I didn’t think twice about having any
difficulties staying in contact with my family and friends at home. With the impressive
technology we are constantly walking around in our pockets with, it’s hard to
imagine having any difficulty in contacting anyone, anywhere, in the world. Unfortunately
I have found that this is not to be so true. Having an iPhone at home, I had
imagined on coming to the US I would simply be able to get a US phone plan with
data and be able to make the most of using apps such as Skype, What’s App,
Viber and Heytell, to stay in contact with everyone at home in order to save
them & me the expense of texting abroad.
This was one of the first things I did on arriving in the US… but when
my iPhone provider at home in Ireland failed to unlock my iPhone, I was left
with no option but to resort to good old-fashioned texting and just leave the
benefits of my iPhone apps to opportunities when I have Wi-Fi. Little did I
know how much I would end up depending on them!
As it turns out, sending a message to Ireland takes a little longer to
get there than you would expect. Lets just say it was far from instant
messaging. I have never experienced such a delay in msg delivery both to and
from abroad. Some messages would deliver to the Irish phones a day later and
then the same message would deliver another 3-4 times. It is crazy to think
that in a world where everything is at our finger tips, text messaging is still
my main point of contact with my family and friends, and is still unreliable
and unpredictable.
wow that is so crazy that this happened to you. I am planning on studying in Ireland next year and that really scares me that something like that is going to happen to me. I can't believe that it can take that long to send a text message. I was hoping when I go to Ireland that I can just get a long distance calling plan for my phone so I don't have to switch anything. Well I hope that you figure out a way to keep in contact with your family because that would be terrible for me.
ReplyDeleteI have had similar problems as Sarah Jane in terms of contacting home. The best piece of advice I could give to someone who is planning on traveling to a different country for an extended period of time would be to teach your parents/family/friends how to use skype before you go. There are other alternatives to skype, such as google+ which allows you to do cool stuff like chat to multiple people at the same time and watch youtube videos together. But I have found skype to be the simplest to explain how to use for people that are not comfortable with technology.
ReplyDeleteEmily great to here your hoping to study in Ireland. I really would not worry about being able to contact family and friend in the US. We have a much different phone system in Ireland were a high percentage of phone users use pay as you go phones as a pose to contracts so we get great value and service. I am a pay as you go customer at home and have never had an issue like this before and I do a lot of international texting at home even with having apps on my iphone.
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