Did you ever have a pen pal?

zoey · 20-12-2009 03:03AM

marbar wrote: »

hahaha was it a random poster looking for a mate?

I was 11..it was in a penpal section for kids..my friend got a penpal from it and then I wanted one:o

marbar · 20-12-2009 03:06AM

that's fair enough zoey
i remember typiung to my pen pal and thinking i was doogie howser.

KnifeWRENCH · 20-12-2009 04:20AM

I had one from Finland I emailed/wrote to for a while. Haven't written to each other in ages though, although we are friends on Facebook.

My sister has a load of them and I've met some when they came over here to visit. There was one from France, one from Poland and one from Slovenia. All really nice people.

Tar.Aldarion · 20-12-2009 04:32AM

KnifeWRENCH wrote: »

My sister has a load of them and I've met some when they came over here to visit. There was one from France, one from Poland and one from Slovenia. All really nice people.

'Yes brother, these are my, um, penpals, Jacque, Fabian and Anton'

/goes to bedroom

pawrick · 20-12-2009 04:34AM

Had two pen pals when I was around 15 and learning French. First one turned out to be Italian - not sure how she got to be my pen pal - it was through school. suffice to say I couldn't be arsed, since I was only doing it to help improve my French vocab. 2nd was a French guy who I did an exchange with. He was creepy as was his family. I stopped replying to him when I was 17 and the last letter I got from him when I was 22!!!! Telling me about his girlfriend etc.??? I didn't reply, honestly never met a creepier person.

I do have email friends - but these are people I met in real life first but no longer live in the same country so not sure if that counts.

Pygmalion · 20-12-2009 04:40AM

Exchanged letters with a Canadian girl a few times, not a regular thing, we'd talk online so the whole "here's the story of my life since the last letter" seemed stupid (though from what I gather that used to be the point), it was pointless, but amusing stuff.

There were items sent as well (Just cheap "I saw this in a pound shop and thought you'd find it funny" ****, think Hannah Montana diary).
But even without the items there's just something interesting about waiting on a letter, reading it and writing back. Even if it's just stupid **** it seems so much more interesting than it would be just talking about it in an efficient way.

Ah those were the days, also got some kool-aid from it, which is amazing stuff (although will destroy your teeth and health).

SeekUp · 20-12-2009 04:44AM

I had tons of pen pals back in the day . . . I think at one point I'd reached 100. I had about 10-15 "good ones" though, people who I'd actually write more stuff than, 'what food do you like best?' or 'what did you do last weekend?'

I even had little information sheets for all of them to keep them straight.

We got new pen pals from these little things called friendship books (FBs). Basically, they were just little scraps of paper stapled together, and on each little page, you'd put your address label (yes, we had address labels), and a few other things, like your age or a quote you like or whether you're taking on new pen pals. And then there were slams, which was the same idea, except on the little scraps of paper, the person who started it would write a (short) question on each page and you'd go through and answer them (usually they were either/or questions). And then you'd stick them in your envelopes and pass them along to your other pen pals.

I had one pen pal from Spain -- she'd write to me in English and I'd write to her in Spanish, and we'd help each other out with little language things. That was a good deal, I thought!

And then everyone used to get creative; not only with the address labels, but with the stickers and the stationary and sometimes you'd put little confetti in the envelope or other little fun things.

Eventually, it got to the point where I didn't have the time to keep up with all of them. I kept a handful for a while, but when I entered high school, it pretty much fizzled out.

I loved getting mail though.

butterflydream · 20-12-2009 12:03PM

Yeah I did. Met her at the National Children's Choir when I was 10 we kept in contact until 2nd year of college with the letters, then moved onto email. Have pretty much lost contact now. Was great fun though, I looked forward to getting my letters.

InKonspikuou2 · 20-12-2009 02:18PM

I did years ago and because i was signed up on a bunch of sites i still get emails now and then but i'm too lazy to even read them these days. In recent years i've used couch surfing for picking up foreign tourists. Think that's more so e-pimpin rather than pen paling though.

Agent Smith · 20-12-2009 02:22PM

Novella wrote: »

I had a pen pal once now I that I think of it!

I met her in Majorca when I was on a family holiday. Her name was Laura and she was from Shankill. She liked Green Day. That's all I can remember!

I know a laura from shankill who likes greenday...

Insect Overlord · 20-12-2009 03:40PM

In 6th class we were supposed to set up a penpal programme with a school in California. They all wrote to us, we all wrote back, they never replied. Possibly because most of them could barely read or write...

ToniTuddle · 20-12-2009 04:26PM

There was something like that in 6th class. We all paid 50p for an address and it could be anywhere in the world randomly picked.
The age group was from 12-20 which is very bloody stupid. You would at least think they would put a 12yr old with another one!

I got some Egypt dude. Very up himself from certain things he said in the letter. Kept going on about how his father was a doctor and he was going to start his first year in medicine. I wrote but he never replied.

Then there was an American address I wrote to some girl. Pretty boring stuff in her first letter.
My name is blah
My sister plays basketball
blah blah blah.

I wrote back and knew something was very wrong when I got a reply from her.

Her handwriting had completely changed!!
Wanted to exchange currency notes
Wanted me to send these notes first -.-
general weirdness in the letter.

I replied back but she realised then she wasn't going to get any money out of me and so never wrote back.

Actually came across those letters last year think they are still up in the wardrobe!

Cupcake_Crisis · 20-12-2009 04:48PM

I had a french one when i was younger. She came to stay with me one time. Was fun!

spurious · 20-12-2009 04:51PM

I've had a penfriend in Poland (Gdansk) since about 1977. We used to write to each other in German about Abba.
Now she's learning English and I'm learning Polish and we communicate by text and email. We've met up a couple of times and still get on well.

Lirael · 20-12-2009 05:01PM

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

'Yes brother, these are my, um, penpals, Jacque, Fabian and Anton'

/goes to bedroom

Fabian? That's a Polish name??????? quite unusual

I had 4 penpals from Belarus when I was in primary, it really enchanced my Russian

I can speak it almost fluent now

Saibh · 20-12-2009 05:15PM

Had 2 penpals - French and Canadian.

We only wrote a few times to each other - I wasn't great at writing letters

pearliefan · 20-12-2009 05:17PM

yep.. I had one in New Hampshire in America for about four years. She even came over to Ireland to visit! I had one in England for about three years and one in Germany for about a year-but we'd write very often.
I was so bad at writing letters back in time.. but I stayed at it!!

Lirael · 20-12-2009 05:20PM

spurious wrote: »

I've had a penfriend in Poland (Gdansk) since about 1977. We used to write to each other in German about Abba.
Now she's learning English and I'm learning Polish and we communicate by text and email. We've met up a couple of times and still get on well.

good luck with that

Polski jest trudny

sashafierce · 20-12-2009 05:25PM

This post has been deleted.

Abi · 20-12-2009 05:38PM

I did have a pen pal in national school, our teacher arranged one for everyone in the class. I think she was from Pennsylvania... the memory isn't the best. Could have been Transylvania either :pac:

We used to send each other a letter or two a month and that kind of craic, but she was painfully boring, bless her heart.

Did you ever have a pen pal?

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