When I studied abroad in Australia in 2003, I lived in a 3-bedroom apartment near the beach. We had one phone line that my roommate Jenna hogged incessantly (she once disconnected it while I was talking to my mother. When I told her that I'd been using it, she just looked up, open-mouthed - she was perpetually open-mouthed - said, ".... okaaaaaaaaaay" as she continued to dial her boyfriend back in Michigan. Little did we know she was calling to invite him for a three-week visit. We all hated Jenna). If I wanted to communicate with my buddies back in the States, I could use a calling card on our landline at home, run and use the pay phone across the street because most likely Jenna was on said phone, walk up to school with my laptop to use their ethernet ports, or traipse a few blocks towards the ocean and its accompanying strip of cheap internet cafes.
My digital camera, a silvery shell the size of a box of HoneyMaid Graham Crackers, died three weeks into my stay, so I took the rest of my many pictures on film. No one saw them until I was stateside, where I put them into physical albums and then passed them around to family and friends who noticed them in a stack on the shelf.
Fast forward to 2011. My sister is in Peru this semester and yes, things have changed. What could make me feel older than idly dialing her computer on a whim, hearing a "whooooomp!" and then seeing her smiling face on my laptop screen seconds later, wearing a shirt that is most definitely new?
Yeah yeah I'm old. Skype still amazes me. But seriously, how cool is this?
And not only do I get to hear about her adventures dune-buggying through deserts, eating ceviche, and being generally awesome, but I also get to see it in more or less real time as she posts it all to Facebook. When she comes home, I won't ask how her trip was. I'll ask what's up with Evelyn these days and did she get a haircut?
I do have a fuddy-duddy side, and that side whispers that all this sharing defeats the purpose of extended international travel. How can she break free from her Americano brethren and form a new, temporary, Spanish-speaking identity while keeping up with a bunch of emails from her gringo sister? She's supposed to return home insufferably international, pretending to forget what peanut butter tastes like, and only wearing clothes with ties instead of zippers. But overall I think it's better.
Also, her Peruvian cell phone looks exactly like the one she had in middle school.
So perhaps androids who study abroad for you are still a ways off.
