Skype and Family

One forehead wrinkle for each question

I'm in Israel right now! It's all thanks to Birthright Israel Foundation, which pays to send hundreds of Jewish youths to the motherland every year. In 11 days, my tour will take me to most of the major historical, religious, cultural, and political sites in the country. This stint on the other side of the pond has brought back some of the challenges that we faced during our first weeks in France. What will I eat? Will I make friends? How will I communicate with loved ones back home?

With France already under my belt, I can answer all of these questions with ease. I will eat everything anyone puts in front of me. I will make some friends, but not too many (especially since I'll have Robert with me). And I will communicate via Skype, the free internet-phone and video-conferencing software that everyone should know about.

There's not too much to explain - you download the software, set up an account, find your peeps online, and press "call." Skype is how we were able to check in with people back home throughout the year, including at Thanksgiving, when we said hi to my entire extended family.



I don't have a phone in Israel, so if I want to call home, it'll have to be with Skype. And that's fine by me.

Cell Phones

I meant to post about this long ago, but better late than never. A few days into our trip, we invested in cell phones (first time I've ever done that abroad; Maggie had her first cell phone ever during her trimester in Paris in 2003!). We got the cheapest flip phones we could find - 49 euros apiece.

We could have gotten free phones with a contract - and apparently you can break contracts if you can prove you've moved abroad - but contracts started around 20 euros per month, and I was convinced we could spend less than that doing the prepaid thing. Even with what we paid for phones, as long as we buy less than 16 euros of calling time per month, we'll still save money over the calling plan.

I don't know how pre-paid plans work in the US, but with SFR (our provider) you can add anywhere between 1 and 65 euros at a time. The catch is, a 1 to 5-euro purchase is valid for only one week; a six to 10-euro purchase is valid for two weeks; an 11 to 15-euro purchase is valid for 30 days; and I'll stop there because I hope to never purchase that much call time at once. Basically, no roll-over minutes here. I've found that in order to avoid wasting calltime I've already paid for, I end up using more time than you need/want to and buying more time before the week or two weeks or month is up. Very clever, SFR - very clever indeed.

Phoning Phrance

Just found out our landline number in Paris, and in sending it around (let me know if you want/need/can't live without it) I remembered that calling France can be confusing.

First, you dial 011, which is the international access code.

Actually, FIRST CHECK THE TIME! France is 6 hours ahead of the East Coast, so if you decide to call when you get home from work, you will probably wake us up (we go to bed early!). The best time to catch us will be early morning through mid-afternoon EST, which translates to midday through early evening, France-time.

So, first, you dial 011.

Second, you dial France's country code, which is 33.

Third, you look at the 10-digit French phone number, such as 01-23-45-67-89. (This is not our number.) To call a French number from France, you dial all 10 numbers. Outside of France, you remove the first zero.

So ultimately, you dial:

011 - 33 - 1 - 23 - 45- 67 - 89

Et voila! You're seconds away from speaking with your favorite people in France!

The Fine Print: If you want to save money on international calls, you can dial 1010 228 before all that other stuff, and it'll cost you only 1.9 cents per minute from a landline or 15 cents per minute from a cell phone. I refer you to 1010 228 not because it's the best deal, but because it's the one I know about. You can also get a Skype account and either not pay anything (by calling us via a computer microphone) or pay another low rate by pre-paying a Skype account (to call our landline or eventual cell phones). If anyone knows of an even better deal, please let me know.