Telephone "pen Pals" And Monopoly Online Help Neede , Please

[arjay]

I have a personable friend (aged 62) in The Netherlands who would like to talk in English to people world wide.
She has a contract with a telephone company which allows her to unlimited phone calls worldwide. I am in Brighton, East Sussex and chat for about 10 minutes twice a week.

She acts as a full time carer for a wheelchair-bound frail elderly sister (67)who lives with her. Because of this her social life is restricted and I would like to help her improve it.

She is well educated and her interests are TV, DVD's cookery, reading, theatre(once a month). She has a computer but only uses it for e mails.

There are plenty of pen pal sites but if you know of a "phone pal" I would appreciate it if you could tell me about it.

One other thing I would like to do for her with is to play Monopoly online. How could I set this up, please?
Thank you

[albaqwerty]

for monopoly, you could try Hasbro, EA Games or Pogo.com

(there does seem to be a few but obviously you'd need your friend to be on the same site)

am sorry, can't help about the phone call situation.

[Lie-in King]

Glad I refreshed the screen - alba has posted a couple of the ones I was going to suggest you look at. Another that looks possible is Vassal - "Play live on the Internet or by email" - that needs more info which I'd guess is in the site somewhere -

http://www.vassalengine.org/

I *presume* you'd both need to download the engine & the Monopoly Module -

http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Monopoly

Before doing that, I'd have a look in their Forum -

http://www.vassalengine.org/forum/

& see if any Q's you've got have already been answered.

Sorry, but I have *NO* experience of Vassal & hadn't heard of it until now, so can't comment on its suitability, ease of use or trustworthiness, although that last factor appears to be covered by online reviews as being positive.

One last thing - however you try this, I imagine the game is almost certainly going to be the US version, but whether any of them allow for modifying the board, I can't say.

[arjay]

Thank you albaquerty for the answer about Monopoly online.
I hope that, given time, someone will be able to help with finding a site for phone pals similar to Esther Rantzen's "Silverline" in the UK

[HansUrbancka]

I would be wary of 'pen pal' and 'phone pal' sites off the Internet.

Is she able to write in English ? If so introduce her as a member into Answerbank. It would then be possible for her to do as others have done..........Publish a throwaway e/mail address and take matters from there, with advice from you.......such as,... "Don't get involved with Hans, he's not English and certainly Not Danish, he's a Taff".LOL

Hans.

[Mamyalynne]

The lady isn't Danish either Hans.

[HansUrbancka]

No, the lady is I imagine Dutch and perhaps still follows the old tradition in Holland of sharing the cost of dining-out. Hence the saying of 'going Dutch'.

Hans.

[arjay]

Thank you HansUrbancka, Mamyalynne and Lie-in King

[Mamyalynne]

I was no help Arjay but I hope you get something sorted out.x