4371 Miles Away, But Not Far From Home

I am a big Jane Austen fan surprisingly. I find her stories relaxing to read and rather clever. Sometimes while I am traveling I cannot help but recall some of these scenes where friends talk about writing to one another while away on their travels or in a different city for the summer (I found this excellent archive of old correspondences between friends called the Victorian Women Letters Project). It seems so sweet and it often makes me wonder if we have lost the art of letter writing today. Sure, we may send the occasional postcard, but they are often short due to lack of space or sometimes they do not arrive at all (like the batch I actually wrote last year from Vix). With today's technology, is it even necessary to write letters while traveling? If not, are today's technological advancements a good replacement for this old tradition? Do we talk about different things in letters compared to digital technology? Answers to these questions will be different for everyone I think, but I will share my thoughts on the matter.

The world in general is a smaller place. The average person probably knows hundreds of people rather than just a select few from their family or town as was the case during Jane Austen's time. If I had to write hundreds of people while traveling that is all I would be doing. Even if I select people I am in contact with most on a regular basis, it is still a rather high number of people to correspond with. Usually I am not a huge fan of technology and being connected 24/7, but in the case of modern travel, I find it a helpful thing. For a very obvious example, I am able to write about my travels and share my tales of triumph and failures in this blog. I can reach, potentially, an infinite amount of people, so everyone who knows me, or is interested in hearing about my trip, can easily keep up.

Other options include email and Facebook for more personal correspondence. While the blog typically has the highlights or summaries of my travels, I use email and Facebook messages for sending the occasional longer explanation fitting for only one person, a private joke, or just random complaints or embarrassing stories that are just too much for the entire world to see. Even when I am lacking internet access I can still keep in touch with my regular American cellphone. I have AT&T which has a "World Traveler" option which let's me pay a bit extra to use my phone abroad. I can call home and keep in touch easy as that.

All of these features are great, but I have to say that video chat through Skype or Google is by far the best advancement in technology when it comes to travel. You can actually see the other person and can still share a moment or 120 minutes together through the miracle of the internet. If I did not have Skype, I would have missed out on this epic moment of cuteness:

Regal Kitty patiently waiting for his dinner (in Reed's face), just like when I am at home! 

I do not think that it is necessary to write an actual letter while traveling, but I think we certainly make up for this in other ways. Everyone still loves to get letters in the mail I think. It is still just as exciting for me to see I have a new email from a friend or colleague checking in to see how the trip/research is going. In a way, we still talk about the same things people previously talked about in letters, we just have more ways of communicating these ideas. One thing letters cannot replace is seeing a smile from a loved one or hearing your cat purr while you are 4,000+ miles away. Yes, sometimes it is hard to be away for so long from family and friends, but with all this modern technology, sometimes its like I am not even gone...

And probably one of the cutest moments I have ever had on Skype...

The boys trying to figure out this darn technology...