The magic of the internet.

When people first heard that I would be coming to live in the Great White North, they asked if my boyfriend would be coming with me. While a sad decision to make, we had decided that it would be best for both of us if he stayed put. The question then became how would we keep in touch? It seemed simple enough to me: talk on the phone every night like we always have, even with only twenty miles between us. There was, of course, the matter of getting my cell phone plan to cover me in Canada, but no big deal, right?

Wrong. The people at the Verizon store I visited were absolutely clueless as to how I should go about arranging my plan. They handed me a brochure (an exact replica of the information online, which I promise I can read) and told me to call customer service. Awesome. Overwhelmed with the myriad other things I had to do before leaving the country, I set aside my cell service for another day. I figured I would pay the $70+ per month to have a single line with 900 minutes a month to talk to friends and family back home.

Yesterday, my neighbor stopped by and suggested I try Skype. (So as not to sound like a complete idiot, I'll say that I know what Skype is and vaguely how it works. I'd just never tried it before.) After a bit of fiddling around, I've got a Skype account and subscription so that I can video chat and call phones back home and in Canada without limit. For $2.99 per month. Sure, I have to call on my iPad, but I think there's a way I can call from my cell phone and use my Skype subscription instead of the plan. I feel like I've stuck gold here, people!

Anyway, that was my major accomplishment of the day yesterday. I was rather worthless otherwise, although I stopped by the orientation barbecue for an hour. I'm torn about these orientation events because I feel as though I should go, to meet people and stuff, but can't help but feel as though there's no rush to make new friends. I'll see them every day for the next couple of months and that'll probably be rather enough for me. Speaking of which, school starts tomorrow!