The Joys of having Pen-pals
What is a pen-pal?
A pen-pal is a person with whom one becomes friendly by exchanging letters, especially someone in a foreign country whom one has never met.
Why should you have a pen-pal?
In my opinion every child should have a pen-pal when they are in school. I had my first pen-pal when I was in 5th grade and ever since then I have had many more. Pen-pals give you a glance into different cultures and help you understand different parts of the world. If you are like me and really want to travel the world you can make contacts around the world and have people that you can eventually go and see if your relationship with them is strong enough.
Where can you find a pen-pal?
The first website that I found was Students of the World. To be a part of this website they want you to be a student, however you can be older if you are wanting to learn a new language or learn about cultures. I joined this website in 2010 and am still a member to this day. I find that this is a very good website to get your first pen-pal.
The next website that I just recently found is called Postcrossing. I just recently was informed about this website from one of my pen-pals from Russia. This website is different from the one above as this one gives you a website and then you send a postcard to the address and after that someone will send you one back. It's all randomly generated and you can make new pen-pals that way.
My Pen-pal Story
For privacy reasons I will not be putting my pen-pals names on this post but I will tell you where they are from.
Now some of the pen-pals that I had first when I first signed up for Students of the World, I am no longer in contact with simply because we grew apart. However my oldest friendship with a pen-pal has lasted for about 7 years. She is from France and we are now great friends, we have never met but that is going to happen eventually, I can tell you that.
Recently I joined a group on WhatsApp and have 7 new pen-pals that are snail-mail pen-pals and then I also have three pen-pals that are email pen-pals. They are from all over the world; Russia, Mexico, Austria, Germany, Papua New Guinea, France, Netherlands, and Croatia. I have become friends on Facebook with almost all of them.
I love having a pen-pal because it gives me a view into a different culture and I have been trying to learn new languages from them as well.
So if you have been on the fence about whether or not to have a pen-pal all I can say is do it. I have never had a richer experience then when I get a letter from a pen-pal and I get to have a view into their life.
If you are still worried and would like to discuss it with someone, please feel free to send me a message and I will be happy to discuss it with you.
See you next time :)