I’m 27 Years Old, and I Have a Pen Pal. Here’s Why.
Hi. My name is Michelle. I’m 27 years old. And I’ve been writing letters to my pen pal in England for the last 13 years.
Yes, a pen pal, you read that correctly. Rachel and I have been writing letters to each other since the 8th grade. My reading teacher at the time helped our class find pen pals through a company called International Youth Service (founded in 1952 and unfortunately closed in 2008 due to the age of the Internet). I requested to be matched with three pen pals — Australia, Mexico, and England. On February 28, 2006, I received a letter back from the girl from England. And the rest is history.
Our letters started to turn into novellas pretty quickly. We began spilling our guts to each other about all sorts of teenage stuff — boys, namely, but also how different our cultures were. I found her trips to Spain, France, and Romania fascinating, while she thought my family vacation to the Caribbean was “exotic.” The differences in the words we used and how we spelled them — “pupils” versus “students,” “favourite” versus “favorite.” How different our public education systems are — and to this day, we still don’t understand the other’s. But there were things…
