Trans-Atlantic Tuesday: Staying in Touch

After being abroad for 103 days I have come to the conclusion that Steve Jobs must have also studied abroad.  The use of my iPhone, and Mac computer, has made being away from my friends and family infinitely easier for two reasons: Snapchat and Skype.

Snapchat:

Snapchat is an app that allows you to take a photo (usually selfies) and send it to your friends for a designated amount of time, up to ten seconds.  After the time is up the photo goes away forever, unless you have a friend like me who screenshots the pictures!

This is a fun way to quickly send photos of you, or what you are doing to others and allows me to see my friends faces more frequently because during those times when you do not have the time to sit down and talk it can be easier to just send a quick photo to say hi.

The family during a classic family outing 

Emily, Seton, Matt and Meredith sent this to me because they were all hanging out at Holy Cross together, jealous that I missed it but glad they are having fun together! 

Katie and Bean sent this to me to remind me about the annual cornmaze, and how even at ages 15 and 22 it is still hard. 

Matt and Katie sent this to me to show me they were at the movies, and to make fun of the last time we all went to the movies together and I spilled the popcorn. 

Skype/Facetime: 

Depending on the mood of my wifi that day, I can use Skype or Facetime to have conversations with people back home.  It can be difficult because sometimes one party's wifi has a poor connection and you get a fuzzy picture, but for the most part it works really well.  

Matt having lots of fun talking to me! This was during his October break so he had some free time to catch up on his first semester at HC 

After hearing my voice Katie popped up from somewhere else in the house and joined the conversation for a little bit, so it usually doesn't matter who you initially call because others will join in/take over

 Mom and Dad pushing each other out of the way so they can each monopolize the screen 

This is Facetime on my phone, I was on with mom when she was working late one night and I chatted with her while she made her dinner

It can be really frustrating when you are talking with someone and the wifi either completely quits on you or gets so bad the screen goes almost all fuzzy.  During my last conversation with Seton and Meredith this is the screen fuzzy, and the bottom one is when it was working perfectly.  

Yes, they are both wearing blue and white striped shirts, seeing that made me laugh so hard! 

And my personal favorite, when Dad put me on the TV 

I am spoiled that I can see, and talk to everyone with the push of a button but, it is not perfect. The time difference makes it hard to find times where both parties are free.  Then, when you can talk to them, it can be really frustrating to have to wait for slow connections and even more infuriating trying to scream the same things at the screen five times to ensure that they heard what you were trying to say.  

But it is all worth putting up with because when you have had a good or bad day, there is nothing better than hearing a familiar voice to make you feel better, or share in your excitement.