Since some people have asked me about this matter, and as I actually do believe that there are many people over there somewhere who would make an excellent pen pal (they just haven't figured it out yet!), I thought it would be worth it to share some thoughts about this very basic question: Where can I get pen pals?
Let's start with my own favorite: The Postcrossing Forum and its pen pal section. You need to be a registered user to be able to write and receive private messages here. I have been a member for 8 years now and have discovered many great friends with the help of this section.
You can either write your own "pen pals wanted!" add or, if you want to keep it a bit simpler, just reply an add you find interesting. What I love about this section is that there are most likely people who are interested at least some same things as I (postcards, snail mail...) as the Postcrossing itself is already a hobby in which people reading this section have already decided to participate.
Secondly, let's take a look at Interpals.net which I discovered just about two weeks ago. You need to create your own profile and you can fill it with whatever you want to. I've seen people using colors, photos, pictures... And also profiles that are pretty much empty with less text. So there certainly is some variety there!
The site provides data about the visitors of your page, so you can practically see everyone who has visited your profile. The communication happens either with private messages or on a "Facebook-like" wall. It's possible to limit the persons who can send you messages by defining e.g. the age, gender, country etc.
I have gotten a couple of addresses/contacts during this little time I have spent there, but I have to admit that I haven't really fallen in love with this site so far. There seem to be loads of people there who don't read the profiles at all and just keep spamming you with messages that don't tell anything about anything. But I haven't given up on this yet! Maybe I'll report later how this turned out to be after all.
Thirdly, I'd like to introduce you to Japan-Guide.com's pen pal section. I have used this site for years, too, and it was actually "found" by my little sister ages ago. I think the main point is/has been to connect people in Japan and those who are interested in Japanese culture and such, but you can see all kinds of pen pal adds there, too. You need to register to the site to be able to leave an add, and you can leave just one add at the time; if you want to create a new one, you need to delete the older version.
As this site works on "just" adds with no photos, no extra space for links/pictures/etc., the adds are mostly very simple and usually give quite a good impression of a person. When you contact someone via the site, the program sends an e-mail to that person and he/she can then decide whether he/she replies or not. So the communication between people can be a bit slow (at least when compared to the other two sites we talked about above). On the other hand 95% of the replies I have gotten here have been serious ones, so I have been very satisfied with this site.
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Do you have another site where you have find great pen pals? Feel free to share it in the comments!
I'll later try to answer the question "How to make a good pen pal add?"
Meanwhile, I hope you will check these sites out and have fun in the world of snail mail!
I have found most of my Pen Pals on penpalworld.com. I've found it to be a pretty good site so far.
ReplyDeleteI have tried it, too, but didn't like the fact that I should have pay for pretty much basic stuff (like reading my private messages). I still have my account, though, so maybe I'll give it another try at some point. It's good to hear people have good experiences with it, too.
DeleteThank you for the comment and visiting my blog! :)