One of the things I was most anxious about before coming to London was how I was going to communicate with my family and friends. I was worried that it would be complicated or expensive but in reality it\u2019s a lot simply than I anticipated. My flatmates and I decided to wait until we got to London to get our phones sorted out.<\/p>\n
I know people who get US international plans before leaving, but from my research found them to be more expensive than getting a new SIM card or swapping to a UK number. My advice is not to get an international plan, it actually over-complicates communicating with people, especially people in London (some international plans work to text back home, but not still charge a fee to text UK numbers). Tons of UK companies offer \u201cpay as you go\u201d or \u201cmonth to month\u201d options which work quite well for students. I opted for a pay as you go plan with Three that includes talk, text and data. The thing I find myself using the most of is data, and it\u2019s really nice that I\u2019m able to iMessage my friends from home using both data and wifi. For friends that aren\u2019t iPhone users, there are plenty of messaging apps. I personally haven\u2019t used any apps for texting, but have been able to message my non iPhone friends via Facebook messenger and email. Snapchat messenger is another app I find myself using more than I thought I would, since it also works with Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n
For phone calls outside the UK, I use Facetime (audio and\/or video). Most of the time, this works quite well, but it is frustrating at times to do so while relying on the spotty wifi in my flat. The video call will often freeze, or the audio call cut out for periods of time before reconnecting. Other than periodically freezing, the connection is pretty clear.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve had plenty of opportunity to Facetime friends from my home school and family members. Some friend I talk to a few times a week; others I\u2019ve just spoken to once or twice. It\u2019s always a little sad speaking to friends back at Rollins, but all of my friends are so supportive and genuinely interested in what I\u2019m doing and excited for me! It doesn\u2019t really feel like I\u2019m missing out on anything at Rollins because London is so full of new experiences and opportunities.<\/p>\n
My biggest lesson I\u2019ve learned so far regarding communication is to be present in the moment. When chatting with family and friends from home, it\u2019s easy to get caught up in what\u2019s going on at home and feel like you\u2019re missing out on something by taking the semester to study abroad. In reality, the opposite is true; spending the semester in London has afforded me so many new opportunities\u2014 and I keep reminding myself that I have three more semesters at Rollins to enjoy the things going on there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the things I was most anxious about before coming to London was how I was going to communicate with my family and friends. I was worried that it would be complicated or expensive but in reality it\u2019s a lot simply than I anticipated. My flatmates and I decided to wait until we got…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16107,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5950\/revisions\/16107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}