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Original poster

Did you ever have a foreign penpal?

111 replies

HelmutFrontbut · 01/02/2019 20:36

When I was 15 I had an Italian penpal; he was from Sicily and his name was Massimo. We used to write letters (his in English, mine in Italian) and swap photos, he was sooo gorgeous 😍 He invited me over but my parents forbade it, citing the mafia as a reason Hmm Never forgave them for getting in the way of love's young dream cockblocking me Grin

OP posts:
Original poster
HelmutFrontbut · 01/02/2019 21:05

annie ShockShockShock

OP posts:
AviatorShades · 01/02/2019 21:16

Through school when I was 13. Her name was Monique and her family owned an oyster farm. She sent me a gift of a small wicker basket of chocolate oysters. Smile

pootleposeyperkin · 01/02/2019 21:18

Still in touch with mine after 32 years. She lives in Indiana USA. We've gone from letters to email to social media. Never met though, she lives in the middle of nowhere so not the easiest place to get to.

MillieMoodle · 01/02/2019 21:21

Yes I had a Swedish pen pal for years, her name was Ingela. I can't remember which one of us stopped writing but I loved getting letters from her! I sometimes wonder what she's up to now.

My auntie (now in her 70s) had a French pen pal at school. She came over to stay with our family in England when they were teenagers, then my grandpa wrote to her dad and they were pen pals for years and years, until my grandpa died. After he died, my grandma wrote to the family too. The two families used to spend summer holidays together when my mum and her sisters were teenagers too.

brizzledrizzle · 01/02/2019 21:24

Yes, through some organisation in Finland that school sorted out.
I'm still in touch with one of them.

BestIsWest · 01/02/2019 21:25

I wrote to an Australian girl between the ades of 11 and 21 when we both suddenly stopped. I can still remember her address ,her birthday and how devastated she was when her older sister got married and went to live in Alice Springs.

I’d love to find her again, often google her and search on FB.

MadisonAvenue · 01/02/2019 21:29

I wrote to Martina who lived in Ebensee in Austria and Theresa in Drexel, North Carolina. I wish I'd managed to stay in touch with them both.

I also wrote to my best friend after she moved away, I'm no longer in touch with her but 44 years after they moved I still get Christmas cards from her parents.

Oldraver · 01/02/2019 21:29

I had loads...my original one was through a music paper and all the others led from there. We were all Bay City Roller fans. One person would make up a little booklet with their details on the first page and pass it on to their penfriend who then passed it on etc. These booklets would travel the world and if you saw someone who you wanted to write to you would.

I had two penpals in Japan, four in USA, a couple in Canada, Germany and a few others.

I think I spent all of the last couple of years writing to them rather than doing school work.

My favourite was a Japanese girl called Mayumi who was a Mormon and went to University in Utah. I got married and we lost touch.

Funnily enough an old photo of her has recently appeared in our paly (junk) room bookcase

happypotamus · 01/02/2019 21:31

I did a French exchange trip in primary school (it retrospect that seems a bit odd, we were 9-10years old, none of us spoke more than a couple of words of French but we went there for about a week to stay with families and then the French kids came to stay with us), and the girl I stayed with became my pen-pal. I can't remember how I knew what her letters said, as I didn't learn enough French to read and write a letter for a few years after we started writing. I later went on GCSE French exchange trip and got another French pen-pal for a couple of years. I also joined that Royal Mail pen pal club and got an American pen pal called Shirley who lived in California. She died and her brother phoned me up to tell me.

Bezalelle · 01/02/2019 21:33

My whole Year 7 French class got matched with French-speaking pen friends. Everyone else got someone in Paris or Lille. I got a guy from the Ivory Coast. Lovely guy and we had some good letter-chat going. But when the time came for exchange trips, there was no way my parents were letting me go off to Abidjan while my classmates went to Paris. Alas!

Kbear · 01/02/2019 21:34

Yes! Her name was Anja and she was German. Also a girl in Australia who's name escapes me!

This was early 1980s

ShadyLady53 · 01/02/2019 21:34

I was in that Royal Mail penpal group too! I had a Canadian penpal through that and a Spanish boy wrote to me in Spanish and I couldn’t understand it. I also had an American penpal who I met on holiday and another UK penpal through the ME association (I had ME as a child).

I’ve still got International friends but we keep in touch via email and WhatsApp. I miss getting letters though.

SisterOfDonFrancisco · 01/02/2019 21:35

I had one from Turkey and another from France. It was a lot of fun. Wonder if kids do it nowadays. Probably don't.

BigStripeyBastard · 01/02/2019 21:35

I had a pen pal in Mostar, Bosnia in 1994-ish so during the Bosnian War.
We sent off some shoeboxes of stuff during an appeal at school and I wrote my name and address in the lid and he wrote back. His name was Daniel and he was about 10 and his sister was named Minja and she was a few years older than him.
Like a previous poster, we exchanged letters for a good while before they suddenly just stopped. I still desperately hope they were all ok and just moved on and that nothing bad happened to them during that dreadful conflict.

CamilleDesmoulins · 01/02/2019 21:44

Thanks Helmut maybe there is still time although he might need a bit of help lifting me Confused
I do think our children are missing out on the excitement of receiving a letter, particularly one from another country. Maybe the world seems a smaller place to them thanks to the internet

Sherbety · 01/02/2019 21:45

I had two, a french girl and an American boy. I can't remember much about the french girl, I had to write to her in french at school so I never really enjoyed it and only wrote a few times. I wrote to the American boy for a couple years, we would write very long letters all about our lives and everything we had been up to, comparing the differences between England and America, though i doubt I had anything exciting to say. I always imagined meeting him one day, maybe even falling in love but eventually I think I just lost interest in writting to him. I hardly remember a thing about him now but I do wonder how he is

OneWildNightWithJBJ · 01/02/2019 21:45

I had lots! I suggested a pen-pal page in a comic I used to read and got loads of replies! One from Barbados which was very exciting. Have kept in touch with a few from various countries and met them all now.

One girl from Canada I met on holiday and then we decided to write to each other, which we've been doing for 30 years...

My DD has just set up a profile on a pen-pal website too.

Maginthemirror · 01/02/2019 21:46

I had a pen pal from Korea called No-Kap. He had the most lovely writing and was so polite. I still have some of the little cards he drew from 40 years ago. When I was 18 i had just finished my A levels and my mom gave me a letter that had come a few weeks before - she had held on to it as she guessed something was up -a letter from Korea -I always remember the name- from the Reverand Antonio’s Pong - when I opened it - it was to tell me that Nokap and his friend had drowned in a canoe in a very bad storm. I was so so upset

ninalovesdragons · 01/02/2019 21:48

I had a German penpal who I met through my grandparents; they met her family on holiday and gave her my details. She came over to visit several times and I visited her once too- she was the reason I took German a level!

bsc · 01/02/2019 21:49

I had lots, I'm not even sure how I got them! Confused
I had several from USA, one from Germany, one from Switzerland, one from Austria, and the best one was from Peru (she used to send the most amazing artwork she had done!)
Then I had one (arranged by primary school) from the other side of our city (the whole class wrote to their whole class kind of thing). That was facilitated by school, but she was a little bit boring Blush

Mulberry72 · 01/02/2019 21:52

I did! I was very good at language at school (not now, so don’t test me!) and had a French exchange student who lived in a little village in Douai.

It was brilliant, she came to stay with me and I stayed with her and her family for a fortnight. I loved it!

Knitwit101 · 01/02/2019 21:54

Was the royal mail penpal club thing a form you filled in with your details and the country you were interetested in? I remember filling in that form. I had several of pals from Romania but never really stuck with it for very long.

Maelstrop · 01/02/2019 21:56

School did an exchange with French pen pals in sixth form. We’re still in touch and we see each other a couple of times a year, 30 years later.

ItsClemFandangoCanYouHearMe · 01/02/2019 21:56

I had an American friend in the military. A good few years older than me, nothing romantic. He sent me postcards from all over the world. American Sweets you couldn't get over here a few times too.

He happened to be visiting a city near where I lived a few years back and we arranged to meet. Turns out we had absolutely nothing to talk about and he was very right wing and I was very left wing.

Didn't really talk after that funnily enough!

ShadyLady53 · 01/02/2019 21:57

Yes, I think it was called Hola!