Why We Love Skype

Skype was an incredible tool for us when we were in Taiwan. For those of you not understanding what it is, I'll try and explain. Skype is a free program that you download on your computer. You choose a user name. Then your friend or family member also downloads it to their computer and chooses a user name. Make sure you exchange user names with each other. If you have a web cam on your computer you can video talk to each other for free. We used it daily while in Taiwan to communicate with the boys. They really enjoyed being able to talk with us face to face and it was especially fun once we got the baby for the boys to see her.

Another very valuable tool through Skype is Skype phone calling. Before we left for Taiwan they offered a special rate of $2.95 per month. We could call any U.S. number through our computer (not video calling, but voice calling) for just the $2.95 a month fee. I can't tell you how valuable this was to be able to call some family members that don't have access to Skype videos. Also, in Taiwan we decided to change our flights and were able to call the airlines through the computer, thus saving lots of time and money on phone calls. Now that we are home, we have cancelled the monthly charge as we don't need it any longer.

Before I went to Taiwan, I called my cell phone service - Verizon to see what it would cost to make phone calls in Taiwan. They don't have any International plans for Taiwan so the price is $2 per minute whether you call or someone calls you. At that rate, I decided to forgo the cell phone and just use the Skype calling.