A great way to save money, I've found is via dynasky at http://www.dynasky.com/2005/default.asp. It's an ephone card type thing where you make an account and you charge your account with money (like $10 or something) and then you call their local lines link up with long distance phone numbers and talk for as little as 0.02 per minute. I am not sure how it works with the rest of the world, but my calls to China were very inexpensive with this method and they hardly ever got dropped or had difficulty getting through.