It's been called a white elephant, an orbital turkey, a money pit, and an expensive erector set. Seemingly, there's even people at NASA who think building it was a mistake. The International Space Station has been plagued with repeated delays, cost overruns, and bad press. Additionally, the ISS has never really caught the fancy of the general public and most likely there's a fair percentage of the world's population who have absolutely no idea there's a construction project the size of two football fields going on in orbit over their heads.

Source http://www.universetoday.com/2008/

1. Upcoming School Contacts An Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact is planned for College Reydellet in Saint-Denis, Ile de La Réunion on Monday, February 25 at 14:42 UTC. Approximately 550 students, ages 10-17, attend the school. Students contacted Victor Afanassiev on MIR from Tsup, Moscow in September 1999 and the College welcomed Victor Poliakov and Pavel Vinogradov who threw the space model from MIR and also Jean-Lou Chretien , Jean-Pierre and Claudie Haignere. ESA astronaut Léopold Eyharts, FX0STD/KE5FNO, plans to participate in this contact which will be conducted in French. The audio for this event will be fed into the EchoLink AMSAT (101 377) and JK1ZRW (277 208) servers.