How To Stay Connected

Living away from friends and families can be a daunting experience. While the life of an expat is fun and thrilling, you may feel lonely at times especially while passing through tough times in life. You may feel depressed and desperately want to call home or look for someone to stay around you. However, in this age of technology, staying connected with friends and families is not a difficult task. If you already have the skills for communication, with a little bit of initiative from your side, you can always stay close to your loved ones, no matter where you are situated. Relationships also become hard to keep when your schedules become too busy. Plus, there are so many changes that take place in your life such as promotions, marriages, having kids, etc that can drift you away from your folks. Busy schedules can make it hard for you to call your loved ones or even return their calls. Despite these facts, the good news is you can still stay connected with your near ones, if you are aware of the different communication systems and how to use them. To know more about different ways to stay connected, read through the sections to follow.

Ways To Stay Connected

Social Networking
One of the biggest benefits of social networking sites is staying in touch with your friends and families. Plus, social networking sites are great tools to help you find long lost friends. This is why social networking sites like ‘Facebook’ and ‘Orkut’ have become a fantastic way to stay connected and renew relationships. You can even create your own family group and keep each other updated with all the latest happenings and events. 

Online Chatting
If you are internet savvy and have good typing skills, then chatting can be a great way to stay connected with your families that too absolutely free of cost! All you need to do is set up a free account with Yahoo, Gmail, MSN, AOL, or any such service provider. Your folks will also need such similar accounts and then you can chat real-time online.

Email
Email is also a wonderful way to stay in touch with your loved ones. Make it a habit to write to your friends and families occasionally. Have you gone for a trip or just celebrated your birthday? If yes, why not personalize your email with a full description of the event and attach a couple of photographs with it? This will help your distant relatives to get a good feel of what is going on in your life and they too will feel connected. Plus, you can also send them e-greetings to wish them on their birthdays, anniversaries, holidays etc.

Blogging
Blogging can be another fantastic way to stay in touch with your relatives. If you are living in a different city or a different country as an expat, setting up a free blog can be fun. You can post all your new experiences in the new land and share it with your friends. Support your posts with images and videos. If you have a flair for writing, blogging can be a wonderful experience. Just go for it.

Voice Chat
If you wish voice chat with friends and folks rather than emailing or chatting, then voice connection is a great way to stay in touch. Voice connection lets you voice chat using your computer. If you and your friend have webcams attached to the system, you may even see each other real-time while chatting. 

• Texting through mobile phones (SMS)
• Virtual Private Network
• Instant Messaging
• Snail Mail