A Stalkers Paradise.... (Penpals)

Member Name: Sarccyslayer

Product:	Penpals
Date:	17/08/05 (468 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great way to meet like minded people

Disadvantages: Emails from Ghana

Aimee is 24 years old, live in Rotherham and has a passion for Sheffield Wednesday FC, going out, writing letters, working on her novel, driving her new car and meeting her penpals. Aimee is one of my best friends and I met her through a friendship book when I was 13 years old and from there we began pen-palling.

I first started pen-palling as it is called roughly when I was around 10 years of age (a whopping 16 years ago); it was a school project in which we had to correspond with one or two people from another school in Derbyshire. The idea being that it would improve our communication skills as well as our literacy, punctuation and grammar.

My first penpal was called Susanne although she preferred to be called Sue and she was a year younger than me. After exchanging letters a few times, which the school paid the postage for and we began to get to know each other better. We would talk about everything from school, family, music and hobbies to our favourite songs. Sadly a few years after we began writing she moved overseas to Australia and I lost all contacts with Sue which upset me quite a lot, that’s when my Auntie Jeanette suggested that I start writing about myself in friendships books so that like-minded people could see this information and write to me so I could form new friendships.

Aimee was the first person to write to me, by this point I was 13 years old and Aimee and I had so much in common that our letter would escalate to well over 100 pages a time, we told each other everything. From writing to one another we met up and every few months one of us would travel on the train between Sheffield and my hometown to visit one another.
Thirteen years on Aimee and I are still writing to one another and although I haven’t seen her in over two years and she has yet to meet Steve, I still feel we are as close now as we were back when we saw each other on a regular basis. We talk on the phone regularly, email and text one another and I know that if I ever need someone to talk to about any subject then I could talk to Aimee without her judging me, she would be open and honest with me and I would listen to her advice. In thirteen years Aimee and I have both met each others families, stayed at each others houses, been on day trips, visited each other at University and college and I’ve been with Aimee when she has been through some of the toughest times in her life, which she now getting over and is trying to return to normal life.

How do you Pen-pal? Well there are two different kinds of pen palling, the first being snail mail and the second being electronic mail. Electronic mail is a new concept to me, new in the sense that I have only been doing it for the past few years and this involved corresponding with people through email and forums much as you would in a letter and there are also chartrooms and the use of MSN Messenger, ICQ and various other messenger types that you can use to correspond with people. Snail Mail is simply a term used to describe writing someone a letter and using the Royal Mail to send it.

However, Email penpals are just as good as regular letter writing penpals - however with email you can be in touch with someone without revealing your address, it just means that you can correspond regularly and faster.

Pen-palling is simply a way of corresponding with people in different cities, counties and countries, what you choose to write about simply depends on what interests you share, your life story or simply someone to talk to about personal matters. You will find that there is a pen-pal group online for every possible interest, religion, sexuality and even if your vegetarian, vegan or a fruitarian, all you simply need to do is look for that said group and get yourself acquainted.

Why do I pen-pal? Well in short I enjoy meeting new people and I like learning about them and their lives, it is a way to meet like minded people from all over the world and most of all it is fun. In my lifetime in the pen-palling world the most people I have ever written to at anyone time is 60 people, they came from all over the world with ages that ranged from 17 right up to 30 and I am still in touch with most of them, granted I don’t actually write letters to all of them these days because the use of technology now means that at a touch of a button I can email, text and MSN most of them and I am fortunate enough to have met some lovely people with whom I’ve shared some life changing experiences with.

I am also lucky that there is a group of us which contains about 8 people and we have all been writing to each other for many years and we used to meet up every 6 months in Birmingham on a pen-pal meet, stay over in a hotel, getting drunk and generally spend time catching up on gossip that we haven’t included in a letter and this has always been great fun. However, we haven’t managed to get together for a good few years now because we have all moved on, three of us are married, one has children and many other reasons but we are still all in touch with one another.

How do you get a pen-pal? Before answering this question you need to ask yourself, in my opinion, a few questions:

1) Have I got time for a pen-pal? Corresponding with someone isn’t a part time hobby, it does involve a lot of time and thought and because you are dealing with ‘real’ people, you can’t just throw them to one side once you get bored. Writing the very first letter is also a daunting experience if you have never done it before, like with an interview, the first 30 seconds count the most, and the same could be said for a letter. Your letters need to be natural, informative but not boring and represent you as a person as much as possible. Don’t try to be someone your not.

2) What type of pen-pal do I want? Snail Mail or Electronic Mail and am I comfortable giving out my email address or home address to a complete stranger? So the first decision to make is whether or not you want to write a letter (by hand or type on a computer) or whether you would rather use Email. I partake in Snail Mail and Email because I find it suits me much better.

3) How old do I want this person to be? This is one of the most important questions to ask yourself. I’m currently 26 years old and prefer to write to people around my own age or a few years older because I feel more at home with people of those ages and I am more than likely to have a lot in common with them.

4) Where do I want pen-pals to come from this is probably one of the most important questions because you do find that once you sign up to an internet forum or use an online service to advertise yourself that you can get flooded with begging letters from Ghana and other African places and also with prisoners from Death Row in America. I have experienced both of these and chose not to pursue either option.

5) Can I afford it? If you are writing snail mail to people, you need to take into consideration the cost of postage! Depending on how long your letter is and where you are posting to, the cost could all mount up.

Once you are satisfied with your answer to these questions then I would suggest proceeding. One of the best places to start would be with an online forum and there are a lot of different websites to look through if you Google ‘Penpals’. A website such as http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/friends-penpals/ is a site which I have belonged to for a long time and to get started you need to sign up giving a few details about yourself such as your name, age, interests and what your looking for in a pen-pal and once your advert has been agreed by the group administrator you can then correspond with a lot of people, you will usually find that most people will send you an email to say hello and welcome and your pen-palling journey begins from there.

Another good site to use, again which I have belonged to for some time, is www.interpals.net (which is also free to use) and again, I have been using this website for many many years and have never had any trouble with using it, I have had no unsolicited mail or emails and through this site I have met many lovely people from all over the world with whom I correspond with. One word of wording – this site does have a lot of pop-ups, which most people find really annoying, so ensure your pop-up blocker is working. The Interpals website is probably my favourite of the two websites because you get more choices on searching for the kind of pen-pal you want.
When joining an online website always make sure you read the rules because there could be a subscription charge.

The final way of getting pen-pals is through using a friendship book which is again is a book made by someone and people write in their details advertising for new pen-pals and this book gets passed around everyone’s penpals and it is used to meet new people. Once it is full it is rightfully returned to its owner and the whole process begins again, at any one time I have found myself with over 20 friendship books to fill in and pass on, but obviously you don’t have to do this if you choose not to.

So you’ve heard the good points about pen-palling, surely there must be some bad points! Yes in short there are and most of them I have already mentioned, so to re-cap….

1) The main problem with online websites is that you do often find yourself bombarded with emails from men in Ghana and such places, I simply put all these people on my blocked list to ensure I am not bombarded with email requests. Always be

2) Always be careful when giving out personal information – where you live, your mobile or landline telephone number etc.

3) Don’t write/email to lots of people to begin with; you need to decide how much time you need to devote to this hobby. When I first started writing to people I started with less than 5 pen-pals and over time this grew upwards to over 60 and at this point in time I found myself writing 2 or 3 letters a day to people.

The pen-palling world is not something many people talk about and other than the people I write to, my own circle of friends from School and University are not involved in this hobby and for me it is a pastime that I truly enjoy being part of, it has helped me to learn a lot about myself and I have also been lucky enough to meet and correspond with some wonderful people.

So, if this does sound of interest to you and you have more questions, would like to get involved and want pointing in the right direction, don’t hesitate to ask me.

Summary: A great way of meeting like minded people