#penpalling

Hi everyone! It's Zu here

I kinda dabbled in penpalling last year but I just recently started to take it more seriously. I'm currently looking for new penpals to write to!

🐢 About me

I'm 28, my pronouns are she/her and I live in Mexico City. I'm a lesbian and I love meeting people within the queer community. I majored in illustration but I didn't really love it so I pivoted to teaching, which turned out to be my true passion. (It was quite a surprise tbh, because I'm rather shy and introverted).

🪐 Interests and stuff I love to talk about

Word games (crosswords, Scrabble, Wordle) and guessing games. Sudoku. Junk journaling. Drawing with ink and watercolors. Synesthesia! (mine is the grapheme-color type) and how it plays out across different languages. And going along those lines, I love talking about color.

Animals of any kind (especially my dog, but I also adore cats and deep sea animals and all animals hahahah). Stargazing, constellations and the night sky. Trying food and trying to cook interesting food. I'm fascinated by sensory experiences (smells, sounds) and their connection to memories. I have a penchant for spices, tea and aromatic plants.

Some stories and music I've intensely gravitated to: The Power of the Dog (book and movie), Carol (book and movie), After Yang (movie), On a sunbeam (graphic novel), Buddha Mountain (movie), The Lost Daughter (book and movie), La strada che va in città (book), Abbott Elementary (tv show), Ostium (fictional podcast), Kendrick Lamar's "Mr Morale and the Big Steppers", Sampha's "Lahai".

And of course, everything language: being a language learner, etymologies, words that are just beautiful, funny words, pragmatics, sociolinguistic phenomena, the politics of language.

🖌️ Penpalliing ideas

I could write to you in Spanish, English or Italian, and while I couldn't do it as proficiently, I'd also be able to write to you in German or Mandarin (: If you speak or study any languages that weren't mentioned above, I will first frolic in circles and then proceed to learn at least some words in your language to interact with you.

I'm very open to using penpalling as a means of exchanging languages! Wanna make corrections to my letters, or wanna receive corrections from this Spanish speaker? I'm in! Wanna share letters written in more than one language? Please do (:

But of course this doesn't have to be language-centered. I guess what I'm really looking for is having something meaningful to communicate. So my letters might contain drawings of interesting objects or places, recipes I invented or tried to cook, ephemera, stories about everyday life in my city, riddles, words I heard for the first time.

📨How to start

I'd rather chat with you for a bit before sending letters, just to get to know you, and to find conversation topics (: I'd prefer to do so by dm, but we can choose what suits us best.

So yeah, once we feel that's done, we'd exchange our mailing info! And while I'm mainly seeking to do snail mail, it's perfectly fine if we decide to keep it digital.

Please keep in mind that I only want to exchange mailing info with people above 18 (:

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