Out-of-Country Phone Calls

Your facilitator will get you settled into your apartment by showing you where to buy groceries, providing you with your internet connection (at least letting you know where you can get it) and providing you with your own cell phone. The cell phone is a prepaid phone that will allow you communicate with your facilitator. You may use it for personal use as well; it will just eat up your minutes.

Since you will most likely have internet while here in order to communicate with family back home. I recommend setting up a Skype account for at least the purpose of making phone calls to your family/friend’s cell phone or their land lines. If you go to Skype website, you can purchase 1 month of unlimited calling to the U.S. or Canada for around $2. As long as your computer has a microphone, you will be able to use this service. Set this up right before you travel because once in Ukraine, Skype becomes user-friendly to Ukrainians and that changes the pricing and your ability to pay using a credit card. Make sure you cancel this service upon returning home because I believe it will automatically renew each month. To call home using your cell phone is pretty expensive from a prepaid cell. Also, just using video calling (computer to computer) is free through Skype, but it will eat up time on the internet. Sometimes you have to pay per Kilobyte for internet usage depending on your apartment’s location. You can always gain internet access at McDonalds (they are everywhere) and TGI Fridays (one located just off Khreschatyk).