#snail-mail

Hi there! After helping someone out to write their first letter to their first penpal, I thought I could use some of my penpalling experience to give away some ideas on how and what to write on your first letter to your new penpal. These ideas are, of course, far from perfection, so any extra suggestion will be highly appreciated!

1. First of all, you can write a brief letter introducing yourself and your life situation (are you a student? do you have a stable job? do you live alone? do you have pets? what are your plans for the near future? anything interesting that happened to you lately?).

2. Attach a visual description of yourself and your interests. This will make your penpal remember stuff about you easily and it will come handy when they write you back. Here’s one I made last year for one of my penpals:

3. Finally, you can write some questions for your penpal in a separate paper. This is really good to break the ice between the two of you and get to know some information about your new penpal that actually interests you. For example, I’m really into books, so some of the questions I’d ask would be:

- What’s your favorite book?

- What’s the book you disliked the most? Why?

- Do you feel related to any book character?

If you still feel creative after doing all of these, these are some extra gifts you can add in your first letter/package:

a picture or a drawing of the place you live

a postcard of your hometown or from place you visited recently

a map of the place you live with some notes written on it

a picture of your pets 

a picture of your favorite anime character

samples of your favorite washi tapes

one bag of your favorite tea

a small card with book/movie/song recommendations

a small souvenir from your country, like a keychain or a magnet

My name is Agata, and I’m 22 years old student based in Poland. I recently got a Bachelor’s degree in Culture Studies and now I’m applying to Community Informatics and Art & Design (we will see where I’ll be accepted). 💻 🎨

My goal is to become UX/UI designer and move to one of the beautiful capitals of Northern Europe. Despite „official” university studying, I’m also learning Norwegian! My love for this language started back in middle school, but I’ve never had enough determination to get past the first lesson.

I love nature, drawing, painting, journaling, snail-mailing. 🌸 My dark side you can see on my main blog.

Kia Ora,

My name is Fern,

Im 19, female, I speak English and Te Reo Maori.

I’m from New Zealand.

My interests include; hiking, running, reading, art, photography, writing, science, history, the environment, animals, travel and ethical fashion.

I’m currently studying environmental science, biology and cultural anthropology, whilst working part time to save so I can spend more time travelling and volunteer overseas.

I’m looking for a pen pal who lives internationally to exchange letters and/or emails with, I want to learn more above different cultures + countries whilst meeting new and interesting people.

If this sounds like something you would be interested in send me an email on [email protected].

I look forward to hearing from you,