What is the best way to call home?

If your bringing a laptop computer with you, you might want to look into www.skype.com
Once you install the free software, you can make free computer to computer calls anywhere in the world, and dirt-cheap computer to land-line calls.

Just buy a phone card, that's the easiest and cheapest way to go about it. Unless you are expecting people to call you, then you might consider the cell, but really, the phone card is the best way to go. (Try not to use it at pay phones though, the rates are much higher, if the room you are staying in has a phone, use that one).

Hello! Skype is a great idea if you have your laptop, if not, I really suggest getting an International Student Identity Card from STA Travel. They send you a great phone card with the best rates I've seen.

http://www.statravel.com/cps/rde/xchg/us_division_web_live/hs.xsl/discountcards.htm

(or you can see if any place around you issues them)
http://www.myisic.com/MyISIC/GetYourCard/CardZipSearch.aspx

You can also try searhing google for global calling cards.

http://www.worldphonecard.com/
http://www.iscard.com/rates/home.asp

Buy a prepaid /disposable Cell phone! Or, start a blog. My friend did that for his study in Spain, and we followed his trip the entire journey. There's plenty of Internet cafes which are cheap, and you can use my space or www.blogger.com or any those places to post.

Plus, remember there's a time difference. If you email your family can reply back when they are awake!

Re: the blogging idea -- If you are concerned about everyone on the net being able to read your blog, you can password protect it and hand out the password to only your chosen readers. I think blogger and wordpress.com offer that, and it's not difficult (but a bit geeky) to do if you host your blog at a commercial hosting company.