getting back into penpaling

I think I started writing letters at the age of eight or nine. I remember meeting a nice girl during summer camp – Melanie. We hit it of straight away and said a tearful goodbye on our last day. Because she lived in Hamburg and I came from Freiburg – the other end of Germany, we knew we wouldn't see each other again. So we started writing letters and postcards to stay in touch. It was the time before e-mail, twitter and facebook.
Later I found pen pals in Finland and France even in far away Florida. Maybe we didn't write as often as we could have, but we kept it up for many years - well into high school. As time went on, technology progressed, we all got busy with jobs and university, the letters started to come less frequent and eventually stopped coming at all. But my love for writing letters never ceased.
So I've spent some time web surfing and sifting through dating sites, pen pal agencies, blogs and message boards and ultimately found some people who, like me, wanted to revive the old art of letter writing. I sent out a view introduction letters and finally today my reward came in form of a beautiful letter from India.

What a wonderful feeling. Imagine going to your letterbox and instead of your telephone bill there's a thick envelope with foreign stamps and your address in scrawly handwriting. Isn't this the best thing ever? Knowing someone far away has been thinking of you, took the time and chose some nice paper to write to you – it kept me smiling the whole day.