So I was laying in bed the other night wondering, do kids still get paired up with penfriends in school? Is writing by hand now a dying form?
How many people reading this still write to a penfriend (by hand not via email)? I am proud to admit I do!I just love it when a new letter drops through the door and I get to catch up with my penfriends.
I have a few and love getting the old pen and paper out once a week or so and getting writing to the lovely lady’s I have met that way. Don’t get me wrong it’s not all good going, I have met some.. ‘strange’ people through pen palling, I remember one women when I first started a couple of years back who used to writing to me a couple of times a week, begging me too look up so and so ‘celebrity’ to see if they are single, and if they were how she could meet up with them. Sometimes they would be the same celebrity over and over but most often it was someone else. And that was all the letters consisted of no Hi, how are you even! I have to admit I got slightly freaked out when she got hold of my mobile number and then I was getting texts every few minutes asking the same thing, and sadly I have to admit in the end I did pretend to have moved and to have changed my number. I don’t feel good about this, and never will but I didn’t know what else to do in the situation. I think the fact at first I was being friendly and googling and answering as best I could wasn’t the best thing to do. But not to dwell on the one ‘strange’ person I came into contact to. I am here to rave about the good ones!
I have penfriends of all ages, most are in England but I write to an amazing 60 year old women in South Africa and she is such a pleasure to talk to, and I have a lovely ‘postcard – friend’ from The Netherlands, we write a note on the back of a postcard and pop those in the post to each other instead of writing a long letter, great way for people who don’t have much time to write long letters to keep in contact! With my pen-friends I have been through births and marriages, the sad times and the happy times and a whole lot of laughs.
I find all sorts of emotion can come just from the piece of paper in front of you, so much more than words on a screen. And how about the fact that someone has taken time out of there day to write just to you! I know this can be done by E-mail but copy and paste is also available. It’s become so easy to type a generic email ‘to all’ and shoot it off to a whole number of people in seconds.
So how about you what do you like? Hand Written or Email? And if anyone is interested in getting a pen-friend and wants some information on it, just leave me a message and I’ll get back to you ASAP.
Although I have become a bit of a techno-geek, and love my blog and my emailing and my word processing, there is nothing better than a handwritten letter. I completely agree with you – the sentiment seems more genuine when you receive a handwritten letter, and that’s where computers will never take over.
How do you get penfriends then? I remember having one in school but she stopped writing letters
I’d love to know how you start up the connections x
Hey
So glad I’m not alone on that one
I have to admit the way that worked best for me was Take A Break Magazine, they have a list of people wanting penfriends, I’m sure it’s still going and you just drop Kate there a line to ask about having a copy and if you want for her to add you in just write a little about yourself. Or I can see if I still have mine if you would like me to post it off to you?
There are many online sites to meet up with penfriends but I’ve found a lot of those are littered with people who think it’s a dating site, I lost count of how many times someone asked me to marry them it was very strange lol. So I gave up with those, though I did find a lovely penfriend through one and I’m sure there are other genuine people on them it’s very much trying to dig through all the no goers to get there. If you did decide to look online I would try http://www.interpals.net and then use the block feature. You can if you want also set it so only females or males can contact you and set the countries you would like to hear from.
I also don’t mind asking some of my pals if they are up for having a new pal, quite a few have facebook so if you do you could start getting to know them that way to start with before giving out your address if you are worried about that.
Another way to find new pals is to doing something called friendship books, they are books started by someone who might be looking for penfriends or maybe someone to swap with, a lot of people put a small blurb about themselves in there such as year of birth, gender, and likes. I normally have some in stock which I pop in with my letters.
And of course I always don’t mind finding someone new to write to, thought I will admit I’m not one of these people who replys to letters straight away, I like to leave it say a month between letters so I can have a good old natter back.
I hope that helps a bit
Sarah
xx
Thanks for the fab reply, I’ll defo look into the Take A Break thing and have a nose around the online sites.
Facebook seems like a good way too (seeing as I live on there!!)
I love finding new people to talk to (although I talk a lot…) so send me an email or add me on Facebook or something if you like.
Maybe I will be able to get my trusty fountain pen out again one day
Han xx
Give it ago, I mean if you decide you don’t want to write back at the time, you have the list then for looking at if you ever decide you do want to.
It’s good that it includes a blurb on there as well, not just a list of names and addresses, at list you know a little about the people you are writing to, to give you an idea if they are the right person for you 
.
Sarah xx
I will check out that website. I really would like to have a good old fashion pen pal.
This was a fun walk down memory lane. I had forgotten, until your blog,about my youthful days of having penpals. I wrote to a young lady in Birmingham UK and to one in Japan. The tangible paper and pictures, I still have. It was exciting. We kept it up into our mid teens and then got involved in other things and eventually lost contact. It was a wonderful experience as I recall.
janeofwisconsin.com
Hi Nini,
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Hope you find some luck over at interpals
Hi Jane,
Glad you enjoyed it and I brought back some nice memories for you. I actually don’t live far from Birmingham UK myself, its just about 12 miles up the road from me.
It’s lovely to hear everyones memories of penfriends, and that it is looked back on fondly. I hope it is one of the things that just doesn’t get lost to the internet in the future, just like I hope that books aren’t fully replaced by Kindles and Readers. I just can’t get used to reading with a hard piece of plastic in hand, I look the feel of soft pages turning.
Sarah x