We picked up our Magic Jack yesterday. This is a device that we had heard about from other expats who raved about the efficiency of using it to keep in touch with their family and friends back home. It basically assigns you a local, California phone number when you activate it, (of course not ONLY California, you choose the location of the local phone number). Then, when we are in Panama we will have a local number for people to call us on. It costs us about $20.00 a year and that’s it. So it is equivalent to making a local call for anyone who calls us. It’s using wifi to place phone calls not unlike Skype or Vonage which are similar to Magic Jack. There are many different ways to go in terms of internet phone services but we are hoping this is going to be a good solution for us. We shall see. Stay tuned, I’ll let you know how it goes! For now, I”m very excited that we can give all our friends and family an actual local telephone number where they can reach us. Technology really has made the world a much smaller place. Of course, we have to be at home for our phone to actually work! Good luck catching us between hiking, exploring,roaming around the countryside and generally enjoying our new home.
Let The Adventure "Continue"! 
My niece has used something that sounds just like this since she moved international three years ago. I just call a 408 # and hopefully she answers. I think the call comes into her computer and she has to be home to get it, but it has worked out quite well these past three years. Good luck!
I’ve heard a lot of people use this and it works very well. I do the same thing on Skype. Just keep trying because you have to wait until I sit down at the computer and notice the Skype thingy blinking to tell me I have a msg or missed call. For a while I was concerned until I realized, there isn’t a thing I can do about anything anyway so if I miss a call, oh well 😀