I <3 Postcrossing
Good morning!!
So you may be thinking what on earth is Postcrossing? Well I going to tell you that as well as why I love it.
Postcrossing is an online project that allows its members to send and receive postcards from all over the world. The project's tagline is "send a postcard and receive a postcard back from a random person somewhere in the world!" Its members, also known as postcrossers, send postcards to other members and receive postcards back from other random postcrossers. Where the postcards come from is always a surprise. Postcrossing is the union of the words "postcard" and "crossing" and its origin "is loosely based on the Bookcrossing site". However, the "crossing" or exchange of postcards works in a different way. A member sends a postcard to another postcrosser and receives a postcard back from a random postcrosser. Exchanges between the same two members only occur once; although direct swaps between members happen, they are not part of the official happenings on the site. The project is completely free and anyone with an address can create an account. The postcards and postage fees to mail them are the responsibility of each user. As of January 2019, Postcrossing has over 750,000 members in 212 countries who have registered and exchanged over 50 million postcards that traveled over 250 billion kilometers.
The highest concentration of Postcrossing members reside (in order) in Russia, Taiwan, the United States, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Finland and the Czech Republic, each with over 20,000 members. Globally, most postcrossers reside in North America, Europe and East Asia. Of particular note, Postcrossing is popular in eastern European and former-Soviet states. As of January 2019, more than one third of the combined total of postcards were sent from Germany, Russia and the United States.
There are no age restrictions like other penpal style websites and it is really fun to see where your postcards come from as well as where you get to send yours.
Now I love Postcrossing because it allows me to travel the world without leaving my home. I personally love collecting postcards anyway so this is a perfect way for me to add to my collection. I also love receiving mail. Since I joined postcrossing in Aug of 2018 I have sent 56 postcards and received 54 postcards. If I was sending postcards every other week then my number would be higher but I usually only send them once a month and then thats it.
Postcrossing is free to join and it is a fun way of experiencing the world around you when you can't travel yourself.
You can head to the website here: Postcrossing
If you are interested in doing postcrossing and want to get some country specific stuff to go along with it try the website PaperSisters.
