Are you that someone who loves to write and send letters? Have you tried writing to a pen pal? In this era, technology is so advanced that we can send and read a message right away by just clicking/pressing some of the keys in our phones or computers. Yet, there are some who loves to write in paper and send it through post offices with a stamp on it. I am one of them.
When did I start writing to pen pals?
When I was in elementary, I wrote an "inter-school letter", my term for letters sent from my school to another school. I found new friends from other schools and we send letters through a friend who brought the letters to and fro. The same scenario happened when I reached highschool. My pen pals were all girls, we talked about our favorites, hobbies, interests, struggles in schools. When I was in college, I started writing outside the country and through post offices. My first pen pal through post-office is my Aunt who worked in Taiwan, I always see to it that every year, especially in her birthday, I will be able to send her a card or a letter so that she will not be homesick. I also had a pen pal from Cebu who is younger than me, a cousin of my cousin. So basically, they were people I know and we exchanged letters from time to time.
Until in the year 2015, I found the planning community in IG and I saw that there were some who were open for swaps and letter writing, there I started participating in stationery swaps. I have pen pals both in the local and international. It made me happy knowing ladies with same interest and I am happy receiving stationery supplies not available in our country.
In the year 2019, I became a member of a Penpalling group in Facebook in which we used to have monthly swaps and activities such as : Postcard train, Washi swap, Anything handmade to name a few. I experienced to be active monthly because of those activities.
What are my disappointments in penpalling?
Lost mails. I experienced lost mails, mails that did not reached the destination especially now, its pandemic most of my mails were not received by the recipients. The ordinary mails do not have a tracker so I cannot trace them anymore.
Return to sender. Aside from lost mails, return to sender mails makes me sad. Reasons for this is, the recipient is unreachable or service not available in that area. It is costly in my part because if I opt to send it again, I would pay again.
Non responsive swap partners. When I participated in swap activity in the Facebook group, there were few who participated who were very late in sending swaps and others did not send one.
How much is the cost of postage?
One of the questions for penpalling is,"Is it costly?". For me, it is. The cost of postage depends on the weight and location of the destination. Local mails are much cheaper than international ones. If you prefer to have tracking of your mails you should choose registered mails so that you can track through the post office website the location of your mail. I will share to you an example of rates of Philippine post office for domestic and international.
For more information about postage you can click this link.
Overall, penpalling is enjoyable and interesting because you got to know people who are actually strangers, and you know each other well through letters. Yet, it might be costly and you really need to give time for reading and writing as response to the letter being received.
On my next article, I will be sharing to you, how to start penpalling. It is now up through this link:
https://read.cash/@MizLhaine/how-to-start-penpalling-17650eb4
You can also write a comment if you want to be one of my penpals.
I used to have penpals from Europe and USA. We all had a common love for washi tapes and stickers. I missed those days.