I came to India knowing that keeping in touch with folks
back home was a priority for me. I’ve done my best to manage the fine line of
immersing myself in a new community and being fully present here, while also
keeping strong ties with the people I care about around the world.
The main ways I stay in touch with home are:
Phone: My internet connection at home isn’t strong enough to
Skype, so I discovered alternate ways of calling folks. For short
conversations, I may call directly from my cell phone, which costs about 6.6
Rupees/minute (.14 USD/minute). If I’ll be on the phone for a longer period of
time, I’ll use the website PokeTalk (poketalk.com) to call people because it
doesn’t require a strong internet connection and costs only .03-.04 USD/minute.
I also set up a local telephone number for my hometown on Skype, which people
in the US can use to call me and it charges them just as if they were making a
call to someone in my hometown. (This service costs about $18 USD for 3
months.) When someone calls my US based number, Skype will forward the call to
my cell phone in India and they charge a little less than .10 USD/minute.
Snail mail: I’ve sent a few letters and postcards, which
cost about 25 Rupees (.50 USD) to send to the US. Although, I’ll admit I
haven’t been as good about sending letters and postcards as I would like.
…and of course there’s always email.
Coming to India, I knew at times I would feel disconnected
from home. Luckily, I’ve found that overall I’m satisfied with the degree to
which I’ve been able to stay in touch with the people I care about. I’ve also
found the other Sandbox Fellows to be an incredible support system and play a
crucial role in my ability to feel at home in Dharwad. I’ve included a couple
of photos of our holiday celebrations that demonstrate how much fun we had
together, during a time of the year when we might be especially missing friends
and family at home.
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