Something you could do is that a few weeks after both of you settled and began your activities (so you can have an idea of what your weekly timetable will look like), is to contact your girlfriend and find together a time that suits you best to phone/Skype/whatever. I understand your concerns about how boring it is to plan your chatting, but according to my own experience, once you're apart from your beloved, it's not a chore at all and you're waiting for this time to come. But to make it work you need to find a time that will suit both of you.
I want to continue this relationship a great deal, but I have never experienced a long distance relationship.
Neither did I when my boyfriend and I began our Erasmus semester. But we scheduled a weekly meeting on Skype and it worked! We used to do this when he was studying in Sweden and I was in Hungary. We were apart for six months and these weekly calls were great to maintain the relationship as well as regular texting. Well, actually we didn't have a meeting scheduled in the week but we knew we wanted to phone once a week so we managed to make it work each time, even if scheduling could ease the situation. We also visit each other twice during this period (each came once) but not more.
Hope this helps.