Penpals

My own experience

During my highschool period I had quite a lot of penpals. Back then I had enough time to send so many emails. Many penpals came and went.In some cases we exchanged just one or 2 emails and then it was over again. Nowadays I still have a couple of people all around the world whom I am in touch with. I write some on a regular basis , others just once in a while.

Why write with people you never met and probably will never meet?

That's a good question! I'll name a couple of possible reasons , that I can think of:

  • hang for adventure
  • learn about cultures and traditions in other countries
  • Create new (true) friendships (very hard!!)
  • Practice your language skills(often English, but it depends on the country ofcourse)
  • assemble a list of adresses where you can stay for your trip around the world

How to get started?

Getting started is really easy. Just go to one of the hundreds of penpals/mailfriends websites on the Internet and write an message/email to a person that seems interesting to you. (You can find a list of some penpal websites on the bottom of this webpage.) On many websites you also have the possibility to make a profile of yourself and post that on the website. It's up to you if you want that or not. Don't expect to much of that though. It could be that nobody ever reacts to your profile or you just get messages from people that you are absolutely not interested in. But if you're lucky it might also result in a very good friendship. Just be careful with the amount of information you post on your profile, but paranoia probably prevents a interesting conversation.



How to build a good email / snail mail friendship ?

Building a solid email/snail mail friendship is quite hard. In the first couple of messages you probably exchange name, age, profession, , hobbies and sports . And then what? If you're lucky you have one or 2 things in common, for example a hobby or you are both fan of the same actor or artist. Then you can discuss the ins and outs on this subject. After that you have to find some new subject to talk about. An suggestion is to tell about those simple things you experience in daily life. It might sound like very normal to you, but can be very strange/exciting/funny to somebody on the other side of the world.
Another suggestion is to exchange some words/sentences in your own language with your penpal. You could try to get in touch with your penpal through one of the popular Instant Messengers , such as Yahoo IM, MSN, AOL, or ICQ. This way contact is somewhat more direct and personal, but you could end up in a situation where you absolutely have no idea what to say (depends on how talkatative you are).

Snail mail versus email

That is quite a personal choice. I personally prefer email, but many prefer snail mail. Snail mail is indeed more special, you get a letter that travelled around the world. It has a special stamp and inside is a real letter , hopefully handwritten . I admit that it is much more personal and has more of a special touch to it then email. But email has a couple of advantages as well:

  • it is cheap
  • it is easy and comfortable to write/type(especially for people with a hardly readable handwriting)
  • Time between sending and delivery is very short, so the news you want to tell your friend on the other side of the world is more up-to-date.

What are the risks?

When you have a profile of yourself on some website, you probably get emails from all kinds of people. Also people that you think are too old, too young, etc. You could chose just not to reply to these people or send a reply that you are not interested. The Internet is open to everybody and that includes a couple of weirdos as well. That is why it is important not to give away too much information in your profile. Probably girls have to be even more careful then guys, because girls are often the target of perverts.
It is often a good idea to get a seperate email address for writing to your penpals. This is for two reasons:

  1. If your email address is on some penpal website, you can expect a lot of spam
  2. If you are being stalked/harrased by somebody , you can just get rid of the special penpal email address .

Practice your English?

If English is not your native language, it can be quite difficult to write to penpals in English.Just try to make short sentences and use easy words. If you practice enough and read and write enough emails, your English skills will automatically improve.

My own experience with penpals

I don't remember exactly when I started writing penpals, but it must have been somewhere between 1995 and 1999. I was interested in other countries and other languages, but ofcourse I couldn't travel all over the world. So I started writing penpals .. I think I found my first penpal on a message board of ICQ , at that time I still used ICQ regularly. She was from South Korea.. The amazing thing is that I am still in touch with her now and then, though mostly by Instant messenger instead of email. I also had a couple of penpals who wrote snail mail.. Snail mail really has something special, but it doesn't really work for me: it takes too long and my handwriting is too bad. But I still keep all of the letters I ever got from penpals in one big box. In 2001 I became a member of Mailfriends.com . That's where I found a lot of penpals/mailfriends.Nowadays Mailfriends.com has become quite big, so I think the feeling of a "cosy community" is gone. I found that the first email is always easy (who are you, what are your hobbies, study/work?) but after that it becomes much harder. You have to find some things you have in common and not have to high expectations, otherwise it is doomed to fail. I wrote with people from almost all continents, but I think some continents have more penpals then others. People from Asian countries are quite easy to find(China, Japan, South Korea) , but language was often a barrier. Also Europe is quite well represented . And ofcourse the USA as well, although not as many as you would expect from the number of Internet users there. Latin America and Africa as not so well represented, but this is obvious because the number of Internet connections is smaller. And I think for some cultures face-to-face communication and body language is more important then for others. At this moment(August 2006) I still have penpals in China, Spain, Mexico. And some friends in the USA, Thailand , Japan, Russia and South Korea , but I don't speak to them on a regular basis. If you have too many penpals, say more then 4, then it becomes increasingly difficult to respond in a short amount of time and to keep track of the conversations you have with each penpal. I really owe a lot to all the pen pals I ever had and I would like to say "Thank you" to each and every one of them. They widened my view on the world and helped me see things with other eyes. And I believe it even increased my social skills a bit and helped me become a more open minded person.

In all those years I've met several of my penpals in person: If I remember right the first penpal I met was my Japanese penpal.She made a trip through Europe and also visited NL and my town. I also met a penpal from Finland once .More recently I met my very good friend in Spain (she was once here in NL and I visited her for nearly 2 weeks in Spain). And during my internship in Shanghai I finally met my Chinese penpal who also lives in Shanghai. Meeting them was each time a special occasion and it really means a lot to me. Luckily my trust in my penpals has never been abused/betrayed. I wish you the same!

You can try one of the websites below to find a new penpal:


Finding penpals and mailfriends online : Penpal websites

Penpal-Gate
Penpal net
Cyberfriends
Mailfriends.com
Interpals
Visit Penpal International
Students of the world
Signal Penpal Magazine, est. 1960 and still going strong on the web
Penpalnet
Sassociations Penpals
E-Friends Penpals
International email pen pal ads.
Penpal Traditionan online international penpal club for people of all ages seeking for friends all over the world.
If you would like your website to be added to this list, add a link to this website on your own penpal website and send me an email.