Penship

Update: Our services for this blog are now closed permanently. We have moved over to penship.net 

[vonkloecker]

[penship]

Hey Everyone!

Just a friendly reminder that we are no longer active on here. You can find us at our website: penship.net 

We also have a lot of updates coming in the future to make it even better! You can see videos on our website showcasing what’s being worked on.

Sincerely, The Penship Team

[penship]

UPDATE

Hey Everyone! It’s been a while. As you probably know we had moved our services over to Instagram for a while. It wasn’t very ideal but had to be done. Well, we’ve been working on making a proper website for Penship and right now it’s in it’s Beta version of the site! Woo! It’s public, you can go check it out. But! It’s also in the beginning stages so it might not look all that special yet. At the moment you can register to be a member. However, we currently have it set so that all members have to be manually approved. This is just so we can slowly add people and have a bit of control over how many users can access the member pages while the site is still in it’s Beta version. We’re hoping to have it in a more finalized version near the end of the month, but timelines tend to get pushed around a bit so we’ll just have to see how it goes! If you don’t mind at all that the site is still in a Beta version and want to test it out, please register and help us test out our site! On the downside, there might be some kinks we still need to iron out. On the upside, you’ll be one of the first to use the new Penship and play an important role of giving us feedback to build a better site! Anyways! Regardless of if you choose to register now or later (or never 😥) - It’s good to be back and we would like to thank you all very much for always being a supportive, wonderful community. Love always, The Penship Team

[penship]

UPDATE

Hey Everyone! It’s been a while. As you probably know we had moved our services over to Instagram for a while. It wasn’t very ideal but had to be done. Well, we’ve been working on making a proper website for Penship and right now it’s in it’s Beta version of the site! Woo! It’s public, you can go check it out. But! It’s also in the beginning stages so it might not look all that special yet. At the moment you can register to be a member. However, we currently have it set so that all members have to be manually approved. This is just so we can slowly add people and have a bit of control over how many users can access the member pages while the site is still in it’s Beta version. We’re hoping to have it in a more finalized version near the end of the month, but timelines tend to get pushed around a bit so we’ll just have to see how it goes! If you don’t mind at all that the site is still in a Beta version and want to test it out, please register and help us test out our site! On the downside, there might be some kinks we still need to iron out. On the upside, you’ll be one of the first to use the new Penship and play an important role of giving us feedback to build a better site! Anyways! Regardless of if you choose to register now or later (or never 😥) - It’s good to be back and we would like to thank you all very much for always being a supportive, wonderful community. Love always, The Penship Team

[penship]

UPDATE

Hey Everyone! It’s been a while. As you probably know we had moved our services over to Instagram for a while. It wasn’t very ideal but had to be done. Well, we’ve been working on making a proper website for Penship and right now it’s in it’s Beta version of the site! Woo! It’s public, you can go check it out. But! It’s also in the beginning stages so it might not look all that special yet. At the moment you can register to be a member. However, we currently have it set so that all members have to be manually approved. This is just so we can slowly add people and have a bit of control over how many users can access the member pages while the site is still in it’s Beta version. We’re hoping to have it in a more finalized version near the end of the month, but timelines tend to get pushed around a bit so we’ll just have to see how it goes! If you don’t mind at all that the site is still in a Beta version and want to test it out, please register and help us test out our site! On the downside, there might be some kinks we still need to iron out. On the upside, you’ll be one of the first to use the new Penship and play an important role of giving us feedback to build a better site! Anyways! Regardless of if you choose to register now or later (or never 😥) - It’s good to be back and we would like to thank you all very much for always being a supportive, wonderful community. Love always, The Penship Team

[penship]

UPDATE

Hey Everyone! It’s been a while. As you probably know we had moved our services over to Instagram for a while. It wasn’t very ideal but had to be done. Well, we’ve been working on making a proper website for Penship and right now it’s in it’s Beta version of the site! Woo! It’s public, you can go check it out. But! It’s also in the beginning stages so it might not look all that special yet. At the moment you can register to be a member. However, we currently have it set so that all members have to be manually approved. This is just so we can slowly add people and have a bit of control over how many users can access the member pages while the site is still in it’s Beta version. We’re hoping to have it in a more finalized version near the end of the month, but timelines tend to get pushed around a bit so we’ll just have to see how it goes! If you don’t mind at all that the site is still in a Beta version and want to test it out, please register and help us test out our site! On the downside, there might be some kinks we still need to iron out. On the upside, you’ll be one of the first to use the new Penship and play an important role of giving us feedback to build a better site! Anyways! Regardless of if you choose to register now or later (or never 😥) - It’s good to be back and we would like to thank you all very much for always being a supportive, wonderful community. Love always, The Penship Team

[penship]

UPDATE

Hey Everyone! It’s been a while. As you probably know we had moved our services over to Instagram for a while. It wasn’t very ideal but had to be done. Well, we’ve been working on making a proper website for Penship and right now it’s in it’s Beta version of the site! Woo! It’s public, you can go check it out. But! It’s also in the beginning stages so it might not look all that special yet. At the moment you can register to be a member. However, we currently have it set so that all members have to be manually approved. This is just so we can slowly add people and have a bit of control over how many users can access the member pages while the site is still in it’s Beta version. We’re hoping to have it in a more finalized version near the end of the month, but timelines tend to get pushed around a bit so we’ll just have to see how it goes! If you don’t mind at all that the site is still in a Beta version and want to test it out, please register and help us test out our site! On the downside, there might be some kinks we still need to iron out. On the upside, you’ll be one of the first to use the new Penship and play an important role of giving us feedback to build a better site! Anyways! Regardless of if you choose to register now or later (or never 😥) - It’s good to be back and we would like to thank you all very much for always being a supportive, wonderful community. Love always, The Penship Team

[penship]

UPDATE

Hey Everyone! It’s been a while. As you probably know we had moved our services over to Instagram for a while. It wasn’t very ideal but had to be done. Well, we’ve been working on making a proper website for Penship and right now it’s in it’s Beta version of the site! Woo! It’s public, you can go check it out. But! It’s also in the beginning stages so it might not look all that special yet. At the moment you can register to be a member. However, we currently have it set so that all members have to be manually approved. This is just so we can slowly add people and have a bit of control over how many users can access the member pages while the site is still in it’s Beta version. We’re hoping to have it in a more finalized version near the end of the month, but timelines tend to get pushed around a bit so we’ll just have to see how it goes! If you don’t mind at all that the site is still in a Beta version and want to test it out, please register and help us test out our site! On the downside, there might be some kinks we still need to iron out. On the upside, you’ll be one of the first to use the new Penship and play an important role of giving us feedback to build a better site! Anyways! Regardless of if you choose to register now or later (or never 😥) - It’s good to be back and we would like to thank you all very much for always being a supportive, wonderful community. Love always, The Penship Team

[penship]

UPDATE

Hey Everyone! It’s been a while. As you probably know we had moved our services over to Instagram for a while. It wasn’t very ideal but had to be done. Well, we’ve been working on making a proper website for Penship and right now it’s in it’s Beta version of the site! Woo! It’s public, you can go check it out. But! It’s also in the beginning stages so it might not look all that special yet. At the moment you can register to be a member. However, we currently have it set so that all members have to be manually approved. This is just so we can slowly add people and have a bit of control over how many users can access the member pages while the site is still in it’s Beta version. We’re hoping to have it in a more finalized version near the end of the month, but timelines tend to get pushed around a bit so we’ll just have to see how it goes! If you don’t mind at all that the site is still in a Beta version and want to test it out, please register and help us test out our site! On the downside, there might be some kinks we still need to iron out. On the upside, you’ll be one of the first to use the new Penship and play an important role of giving us feedback to build a better site! Anyways! Regardless of if you choose to register now or later (or never 😥) - It’s good to be back and we would like to thank you all very much for always being a supportive, wonderful community. Love always, The Penship Team

[penship]

IMPORTANT UPDATE

Hey Everyone! We’ve made a decision to switch everything over to our Instagram. One of the biggest problems we had running Penship is processing everything quickly. Having a database system is tricky and takes a lot of time. Inputting new information for each person manually is a lot of work and then formatting all the posts on top of that is overall kind of stressful work that we don’t get paid for.  SO. With the switch to Instagram we think it will be easier for us as a team to run Penship (helping you find a pen pal) and Instagram is (we think) a nicer platform for people to use. What we’re going to do is provide templates to fill out, like this:

We are going to start with simple templates first to see how it goes. In the future we’ll likely come out with more styles or at least more background choices so you can choose one that suits you more. Hopefully we’ll also be able to add more language options over time (but for now we’re just starting out with English to see how it goes and what can be improved). All the templates will be posted to a highlight on our IG page (along with an example of how to fill it out). Once you save the template, just fill it out and post it to your story! As long as you’ve mentioned our Instagram @ penshipofficial and made sure your settings allow others to share your story, we’ll be able to see your post and share it to our Instagram!  Then it will be put in a highlight made for all the people who have filled out the template.  Every Sunday we will go through and remove any posts that are 2+ weeks old from the highlight, to make sure all of the posts there are recent. Or, if you want it removed earlier you can just send us a DM! Since it’s a lot easier to add and remove to a highlight on Instagram, it shouldn’t take us long to make updates.  As for safety, Instagram already has a lot of handy safety features built in! When you receive a message from someone that you don’t follow on Instagram, it usually ends up in your “Requests”. From there you can read the message without the other person knowing unless you accept their message. Images are also hidden/blurred unless you choose to see it. We can also post tips to our story and create a highlight for it if it’s something that you’d like to see!  What we hope is that with this new system we will be able to provide you with a faster service that’s less time consuming for our team. With the extra time, we’ll be able to focus on bringing new and better things for you to enjoy over time (secret santa, giveaways, etc)! And one of the things I’ve personally wanted to start working towards is opening a Penship store (online shop) so I’m really excited for this to be more of a possibility. SO. If you’d like to continue this journey with us (which I hope you do), please follow us at penshipofficial on Instagram!  As for our database and everything else, we’ll be completely deleting the database and submissions posted on Penship as long as the switch to Instagram goes well. No one who has submitted a post will have info leftover to worry about. We do still have a lot of old requests to send off that are in the process of being sent, but unfortunately any submissions that hadn’t been processed won’t be posted due to the changes being made. I do apologize for that as I’m sure there’s a few of you who were still looking forward to them being posted.  I think this pretty much covers everything but in case you have questions about the changes you can send me a message on my personal Instagram (or if you’re just curious what one of the faces behind Penship looks like you can click and find out). The Penship email is currently pretty clogged up and I don’t check my personal email often enough these days so this is the best way to get a response within a fair amount of time (I will try my best to be quick about it).  The changes will be made to our Instagram after making sure to share this update on our other platforms first. Again, I really hope you’ll enjoy the switch and stay with us as we grow 💗 Sincerely,  Michaela (Penship’s Founder)

[penship]

Hey Everyone,

Penship is going to be closing for a while. I’m sure many of you have noticed that over the past month or so, things have been less and less organized, slow, and we’re struggling to run Penship the same as before.  I wanted to address this myself, as Penship’s founder, because a lot of it is due to changes in my own life. I moved to South Korea from Canada back in August and since then haven’t been able to work on Penship, basically at all. My schedule became really packed and busy and I kept trying to make time for working on Penship but it never happened. As for the other team members, a lot (if not all) of them have become really busy in their personal lives as well. Essentially, there isn’t much of an active team to run Penship these days and for that reason I’ve decided we need to shut down for a bit to build the team back up so that it’s stronger and more ready to handle the amount of requests and submissions we get each day. I made Penship back around 2010? so I’ve put a lot of my own time and effort into this community. It really means a lot to me, so I’d like to be clear that I am in no way giving up. The reality of it is though, I don’t make a living from it and it’s become less and less of a priority over time because I have so many other things I’d like to make time for in my own life. BUT I would really love to make Penship into something even more amazing. I want to continue to help people make friends around the world. So over the next few weeks I’ll do my best to bring it back together. I’ve scheduled time into my weeks to work on Penship, getting remaining requests and submissions cleared so we’re ready to start fresh. I’ll also potentially work (given that I have enough time) on creating a Patreon for Penship. I have so so many things I’d love to improve with Penship and build it into something better, but I don’t have the funds to do it (despite living in another country, I’m actually kind of poor - just very savvy?). I don’t want to give away ideas and plans yet, better to save it for the Patreon, but I definitely would love to work on getting Penship on a more automatic system as right now the team members and I do everything manually. It takes up an insane amount of time that could be spent working on other things for Penship.  Anyways I’m really sorry for the past months with things being all over the place. I hope you can forgive me and look forward to our return. I’m not setting an exact date for when we’ll open again, as I’m not sure how long it will take to catch up and build up our team. However as soon as we can see the finish line I’ll be sure to announce an opening date! In the meantime, our team member Unni will likely still keep our Instagram going (which you can find here) for lots of great snail mail inspiration! Also, final thing, as I’ll be building our team back up we will be very actively looking for new volunteers to help us run Penship! If you’re interested in being a part of our team, you can go here to view all of our positions and where to apply here: penship.net/volunteer  We do keep all applications on file but if you’ve applied in the past I would recommend applying again if you are still interested. Thank you! Sincerely, Michaela

[penship]

Writing Prompts for Pen Pals: The Basics

Whether it’s your first time writing to your pen pal or you’ve simply run out of ideas of what to write about - we’re here to help you out! For today, we’re just going to cover some basics topics to get you started.

• Appearance How you look could be a complete mystery to your pen pal! Swap your silliest selfies, draw your best self portrait, or write a haiku. • Favourite Things What is your favourite colour? These pen pals sent each other pictures of everyday things in each other’s favourite colour.

• Travel What countries do you want to visit? What is something you really love about them? Something you don’t like? Bring out your creative side and make your pen pal a fake postcard showing you travelling in one of the locations you want to go. You can see team member Janina’s tutorial on how to send a postcard on our Instagram. • Family Every family has a fair share of stories to share, write about a time someone in your family did something you will never forget. • Pets  Who doesn’t love cute animals! Share the love you have for your furry friend with your pen pal! For those who don’t have any pets, what wild animal do you wish you could have as a pet?  • Hobbies How do you spend your spare time? There are so many hobbies to try out, what’s a hobby you’ve been wanting to start? • Work What’s the best job you’ve ever had? Your dream job? Even if you were paid millions of dollars, what is one job you would never do? What’s the strangest job you’ve ever heard of? • Home Do you live in a castle, apartment, house, trailer park, tiny home, or are you constantly on the move? What does your room look like? What does your dream house look like? • Relationships Share the story of how you first met someone special, awkward dates, or what you want to surround yourself with instead because you’re just not that into anyone.

• Religion What do you believe in? Is there any special holiday you celebrate? Remember that regardless of your personal beliefs to always be respectful of each other! • Dreams & Fears What is something you’ve always wanted to do? What was something that scared you when you were younger, that you’re no longer afraid of? • Strengths & Weaknesses Nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills... pen pals want to know your greatest skills! Tell your pen pal about something that you’re really good at. Even if it’s just being able to burp the alphabet flawlessly, you can do it and that’s amazing! Bonus points if you can do it in Russian.

• Languages How many languages can you speak? Teach your pen pal a new word! Only speak one language? Create a fake language (replace each letter with something else) and write your pen pal a secret message for them to decode. • Nicknames Sure, your pen pal probably knows your name but do you have any nicknames? If so, who gave them to you and why? • Likes & Dislikes There are always going to be things you like and things you don’t. Make a list of your top 10 for both! Likes: Writing letters! Dislikes: When your pen dies halfway through writing a letter. We hope you enjoyed this list! Of course there is so much more than what is on this list, so stay tuned for some more Writing Prompts by following Penship (and find some pen pals while you wait for our next blog post)! Feel free to add to this list or share your ideas with us! P.S. This is our first blog post! In the past, we have only been posting submissions and updates. We know some of you won’t want to see these mixed in with submissions, so you can always use the English Sub tag to filter them out (using tags on our tags page should also filter blog posts out)!

[penship]

It’s time to officially announce the winners of our 20K Follower Giveaway! They have been informed through email a few weeks ago, but we want to share the news with the Penship family as well! We received some amazing pictures and stories about your pen pal experiences. It was a pleasure to see how much you and your pen pals care for each other  💗

The winners of our giveaway are:

Best Entry Winner: ⭐ Elin from Sweden ⭐

The pictures of her beautiful letters and postcards from pen pals living all over the world and the stories behind it are wonderful! We also adore all of the cute small gifts she’s sending to her letter friends 💞

Runner Up: ⭐ Paulina from Poland ⭐

We loved the story about language exchange! It’s so heartwarming to receive a letter from a different country with some words in your native language. Pen pals who care about you and put a smile on your face are the best!  💕 The winners’ giveaway entries will be posted on our social media soon! Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram! Elin and Paulina, we hope you use your prizes to decorate your letters and swamp your pen pals with little artsy treats!  Good luck! The Penship Team

[penship]

20K Follower Giveaway Event!!!

As celebration for reaching 20,000 followers we’re having a giveaway! To participate you must be following us on Penship and at least one of our social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram).

Prizes

Best Entry Winner: There will be one larger prize for the best entry as decided by the Penship team! This will include some washi tape, notebooks, stickers, and other cool items for you to use when writing to your pen pals (or just for yourself)! Runner Ups: There will also be 2 smaller (but still great) prizes for two runner ups! These prizes will also include cool items for you to use when writing to your pen pals! All prizes will be sent from South Korea.

How to Enter

Send us a story or picture of your pen pal experience!  Whether it’s a picture of a gift or specially decorated letter you got for a pen pal, a story of how you made your new friend, met them in person, or just something you want to share about your pen pal experience - we want to hear it! Send your entries to [email protected] OR post your entry to Tumblr and tag us @penship​ OR post your entry to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter and tag us @penshipofficial Please note: By entering you agree to let us share your entry (story and/or picture) on any of Penship’s social media platforms.

Deadline

The deadline for entries is July 7th!

[penship]

One more week to enter our giveaway! As of right now there aren’t many entries so your chances of winning a prize are pretty good 😉 Your entry can be anything from a picture of a letter/envelope/gift that you sent/received or a story about your pen pal! There is also no country limit, so you can enter regardless of where in the world you live 💌 If we don’t receive enough entries we may extend the deadline.

[penship]

20K Follower Giveaway Event!!!

As celebration for reaching 20,000 followers we’re having a giveaway! To participate you must be following us on Penship and at least one of our social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram).

Prizes

Best Entry Winner: There will be one larger prize for the best entry as decided by the Penship team! This will include some washi tape, notebooks, stickers, and other cool items for you to use when writing to your pen pals (or just for yourself)! Runner Ups: There will also be 2 smaller (but still great) prizes for two runner ups! These prizes will also include cool items for you to use when writing to your pen pals! All prizes will be sent from South Korea.

How to Enter

Send us a story or picture of your pen pal experience!  Whether it’s a picture of a gift or specially decorated letter you got for a pen pal, a story of how you made your new friend, met them in person, or just something you want to share about your pen pal experience - we want to hear it! Send your entries to [email protected] OR post your entry to Tumblr and tag us @penship​ OR post your entry to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter and tag us @penshipofficial Please note: By entering you agree to let us share your entry (story and/or picture) on any of Penship’s social media platforms.

Deadline

The deadline for entries is July 7th!

[penship]

20K Follower Giveaway Event!!!

As celebration for reaching 20,000 followers we’re having a giveaway! To participate you must be following us on Penship and at least one of our social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram).

Prizes

Best Entry Winner: There will be one larger prize for the best entry as decided by the Penship team! This will include some washi tape, notebooks, stickers, and other cool items for you to use when writing to your pen pals (or just for yourself)! Runner Ups: There will also be 2 smaller (but still great) prizes for two runner ups! These prizes will also include cool items for you to use when writing to your pen pals! All prizes will be sent from South Korea.

How to Enter

Send us a story or picture of your pen pal experience!  Whether it’s a picture of a gift or specially decorated letter you got for a pen pal, a story of how you made your new friend, met them in person, or just something you want to share about your pen pal experience - we want to hear it! Send your entries to [email protected] OR post your entry to Tumblr and tag us @penship​ OR post your entry to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter and tag us @penshipofficial Please note: By entering you agree to let us share your entry (story and/or picture) on any of Penship’s social media platforms.

Deadline

The deadline for entries is July 7th!

[penship]

WE’VE REACHED 20,000 FOLLOWERS!!!!

As a celebration for hitting 20K, we’re having a giveaway! More to come soon 💕