Letters and Friendships

Writing has been a part of my life since I was young. I remember exchanging letters at fourth grade with my best friend who was moved to the next classroom (we had been in the same classroom since kindergarten). Luckily for me at that time her aunt and my mom picked us up from school, so we could exchanged letters through them. I don't remember how long this letter exchange lasted, though, because I didn't keep the letters.

This habit continued until my uni days. For some weird reason I always found at least one person to exchange letters with. There were two girls in Junior High (one in second grade, another one in third grade). Then the one in third grade kept exchanging letters with me when I went to High School and she went to a vocational school that started right after I finished my classes, so when she came to school and I was going home from school, we had time to exchange the letters. :-D

At uni I also found a friend who exchanged similar letters with me. I think we mostly talked about boys, love life, and also life in general. It was easier to share our innermost desires, thoughts, and feelings through writing sometimes instead of talking face-to-face, especially for tough subjects. These three girls had a habit of folding the letters into an origami form, so I followed suit. :-D I kept the letters until I moved to Finland and then my mom wanted to clear up some space, so she asked me if she could burn them. Gone with the wind, but the memories are in my head. :-D


In High School I also started looking for penpals from abroad because I wanted to practise writing English. One funny thing happened when I wrote a snail mail to one boy, but never received a reply. Years later we found each other through an emailpal club (though I didn't realize it at that time) and he recognized my name and he mentioned receiving my first snail mail, which he replied, but he never received any reply. I told him that I had never received his reply. Yeah, Indonesian postal service can't be fully trusted! Three years ago when we went to Indo for a holiday, we sent at least a dozen postcards for our friends and family here, but they never arrived. Never going to send anymore postcards from Indo! Ah, but I digress...let's go back to the topic, shall we? LOL!!!

Halfway through university, internet started booming in Indonesia (the very slow one that had to connect very loudly to the modem like in the movie "You've Got Mail"), so I started finding emailpals through emailpal clubs (that was also how I found my hubby, though I wasn't exactly searching for one by going to emailpal clubs). 

I had a bunch of emailpals from many different countries, but many of them have stopped writing or communicating with me. I found one of them a few years back and we got in touch through FB. I'm still in touch through FB with the girl from the third grade of Junior High and the one from uni every now and then, though. 

Did you have any snail mail pals (assuming you're old enough to have lived in pre-internet days)?


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