I am looking for tips on making phone calls back to U.S while I am in Madrid for a month for a Study Abroad program. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

www.skype.com

Or if you do not have Skype access, a prepaid calling card that you buy in Spain. Consult other students when you get there for their recommendations.

We have used Global Phone, www.gphone.com for years with good success. There are different plans but for the one we have been using, you would use a land line in Madrid e.g., payphone, apartment etc. to call a local access number and then inter your ID number and pin followed by the number you are calling. It has always worked. I believe Madrid to US is 0.14 cents per minute plus the cost of a local call. Global phone bills your credit card and I have found the charges to be accurate. There is a 30 second initial charge and then you are charged in increments of 6 seconds.

Another option are the internet/phone shops that are found all over Europe. The charges to the US are usually nominal. Students use them a lot.

If you will have your laptop, truly look into Skype. You and anyone you want to correspond with can download the program from the website for free. Calls and the instant messaging that go with it are free, and if you have a camera on computer, you can even see the person. Voice quality was very good, in my opinion. Just coordinate the time difference with people you talk to.

Another alternative is pennytalk

http://www.pennytalk.com

You can create and manage your account on-line and they provide a toll free number. The cost per minute from Spain to US is $0.02 plus a few cents per connection fee.

So far, this is the cheapest way I have found to call back to US using a regular phone.

Every trip to Europe I have used an MCI calling card. It is the same one with the same number I use everyday at home. It cost 3.4 cents a minute in the USA. I don't know how much it cost per minute International calls but I call home everyday from Europe when traveling and my minutes don't go down very fast. I use it for calls from the USA to Europe also. It is good in 125 countries. Read about it at this website.
http://consumer.mci.com/internationa.../osb/index.jsp

You might check out Telefonica Phone Cards (Tarjeta Telefonica). There are Telefonica blue phone kiosks all over the place and the cost for a direct dialed Station to station call to the U.S. is very inexpensive.

It's good to have a Telefonica card in your pocket or purse to 'back up' whatever other medium you choose.

With the Telefonica Card, it cost me less to call Philadelphia from Cadiz than to call a relative's Mobil in Huelva (about 80km).