Well, we tried something new in the Samok abode last night. We used the computer to communicate to family over 6000 miles away. Being that I'm not really technically saavy, this was a major coup in our household. Okay, I'll be honest...J is the brains of this outfit and she went out and purchased videocam and microphone. We were at J's cousins in Troy, MI, when we got to see how they used SCYPE to talk to family back in Davao. We thought it was cool, but really didn't do anything about it.

J did some more research recently and decided to finally try it. The sound didn't really match up to my mother-in-law's mouth movements, but that didn't matter. We woke The Bun up because Mama wanted to see her. She cried, but we could see that Mama was beaming on her side of the screen. We didn't dare wake up Goobs because he's the sensetive one and that would have been just a little too much to handle. We also got a chance to see J's cousin's baby. The little girl is cute and chubby. It was really nice for J and Mama to connect visually. I could see that it really meant a lot to her. Sometimes I wonder how she feels being 6000 miles away from everything and everyone she grew up with. I think this is going to be something that enhances our lives and makes Mama smile. I can't imagine what it would be like to be that far away from your grandchildren.

Last night we talked about getting mama a small laptop to use for just this kind of communication. She lives in a community about two hours from Davao. It's quite a bit more rural than Davao. She doesn't have a landline in her home, but has a cell phone. We didn't know about internet connections because of that, but after the conversation last night with J's cousin and her husband, it seems like there are a lot of opportunities for "wifi" in Santo Tomas. Right now, she's got to take the bus to Davao and stay with family with high speed capabilites if she wants to talk to us via the computer. Right now, we talk to her by using a phone card that we buy online minutes from. If we can speak from computer to computer it's free, so we want to get Mama hooked up if at all possible. It will beat getting phone cards every couple of weeks...and the plus is the kids get to see their Lola (grandmother for all of you nonfilipinos). That, in itself, makes it all worthwhile.

Of course, the only thing that kind of sucks for it is the huge time difference between here and there...but we'll get over that.