9 Reasons Why You Should Have a Pen Pal
Why everyone should have a pen pal? “Oh why we should? The youth like us doesn’t suit that interest anyway. We already have Skype!”
What’s a pen pal anyway?
Pen pals are a long distance friendships you maintain by writing letters to each other. Finding a pen pal is a great way to connect with people from other parts of the world, to learn foreign language, and open yourself up to a new culture.
Of course, these days we have Skype, which make connecting with others around the world much easier. But the desire to connect with people from other countries has been found far longer than the Internet! The postal service has been helping people learn languages and make new friends for hundred of years. To the ones said that finding a pen pal is a very old-fashioned trend, you’ve got the wrong idea along the way!
I have several pen pals from using an application called Slowly and in 2017 I joined Postcrossing. But, unfortunately, I have never logged in to Postcrossing since the college year started, I got swamped with tons of hectic college tasks, and in the end, I decided to deactivated my account. One of my friends from instagram recommended me to try an app, Slowly. So far, so good! Now I have eleven pen pals from different countries, starts from United States, India, Poland, South Africa, Germany, Slovenia, United Kingdom, Finland, Puerto Rico, Australia. You should give it a shot too, guys!
Why We Should Have a Pen Pal?
One, it will help us to improve our reading and writing skills. Two, teaching ourselves patience, just like when you are out for fishing! Third, promotes our thinking skills. Oh wait! There’s moooooreeee~
4. Having pen pals lets you get to know people who are really different from yourself. I have a Pen pal who is half my age and twice my age. People ten times as wealthy as me, and people 1/10th as wealthy as me. You simply cannot have friends with such diverse set of backgrounds in other ways.
5. Some of these long distance friendship will endure better than offline ones do, because things like moving has no effect on them.
6. Having a pen pal is like seeing into another world through a window, in the same way that books shows us other worlds, but different from books in the sense that the characters in the books will talk to you, answer questions from you, and interact with you.
7. It’s pretty effective at dismantling prejudices. The thing about prejudices is you don’t even realize you have them until they are thrown in your face.
8. Pen pals always has time for you. In the sense, that I feel like, at any time of day or night, write something to any one of them, I can spend an hour or two with any of my pen pals at any time I like and no matter where I am.
9. Sometimes, talking of difficult topics is easier where there is some distance. I’ve discussed many topics with my pen pals that I’d feel a lot more nervous about face to face. Same thing in reverse, my pen pals have told me about many pretty personal things, probably more than they would have face to face.
Having penpals is like travelling through letters. You get to understand someone’s culture from the point of view of an insider, their perspective on society, ways of life. They tell you about places that are not tourist hotspots. You realize that people have the same values everywhere and are more alike than you know.