I was living in London for 6 months and instant messengers and Skype were life savers. I got to talk to my entire family on Christmas through Skype and even see my Dad and half-brother because we both had cameras set up.
It was rough sometimes not ALWAYS being able to get in touch (especially with the time difference), but emails and the occasional (fairly rare) phone call definitely made up for the fact that we weren’t always at our computers at the same time and it wasn’t too hard to feel connected.