(Lilianka) My Snailmailing Journey

My snailmailing journey started in 1999. At that time I was 7 years old elementary schooler, living a happy but bored life. My first letters are for my two older cousins who live in another town. I wrote normal plain letters at first, but then I became more creative with my mails; I started sending items too such as stickers, keychain, etc. But then, it was only happened for a few months and then my cousins got bored for writing letters. I had no more penpals at that moment; I grew up, and found more 'convenience' way too communicate (read: cell phone), and my first phase of penpalling journey ended there.

I didn't write letters in my junior high school period neither at the beginning of my senior high school. But then, I've got the chance to be an exchange student in the United States (2009-2010), and found out that not all the places in America are more modern comparing to my homecity (at that time my homecity was Jakarta); I was placed in Hot Springs, Arkansas (and FYI, Arkansas is rather an unfamous state, and Hot Springs is not even the capital of Arkansas). At my host family house at that time we had dial up connection for internet, limited time permit to access the internet (since if you're using the internet with dial up connection, once it is connected, the phone at your house isn't working unless you disconnected the internet connection), and I had no cell phone (gee a 17 years old teenager without cell phone!). Due to limited access in communication, I came back to a more traditional way to interact; writing letters.

I wrote several letters to my friends back home and they wrote me back. But my truly penpal that moment was a fellow exchange student who live in another town in Arkansas. We met once every three months, and wrote to each other like more than twice a month. She was my good friend there, a fellow asian from South Korea; her name is Kim Minju.

Minju (the black hooded one) and I

These are Minju's letters that I still treasure it till now

In our letters, we talked about so many things! From our crushes, our songs preference, language (Minju teached me a little bit of Korean and hanggul alphabet), and many other things! Sadly, once we got back to our country, we didn't write each other anymore :( I just got too busy with my school, college, and any other activities, but I promise myself I will fix it in this year.

Then in college, I started to do more of postcards. I joined the famous postcrossing, and a domestic level of postcard-pal-ing called card to post (you read it like 'kartu pos' and that is the Indonesian word for postcard). It was really fun at the beginning! I received many cards with good illustration, photograph, and even handmade cards. But then, after a few moments, I got bored with it. I mean with postcrossing, you sent many and you'll get many; because of that fact, mostly postcrossers don't even think a lot about what should they write because they send it to random people (that is also happened for me as a former postcrosser). Mostly all the cards that I received only written like this, "Hello my name is XXX, I am from XXX. I hope you like this card." Few people wrote longer, but still because we don't really interact (I send postcard to X, I got reply from Y, and I send another postcard to Z) it doesn't really satisfy me. Then I finally decided to stop; I need something with more effort.

These are few cards that I received through postcrossing

Then here I am, writing and receiving pretty letters. To be honest, I don't have many penpals, I only own like 6 now. That's because I want to keep my penpals close and I can send prettier letter and more packages; I like a more 'intimate penpalling relationship' (well it sounds cheesy somehow haha). Mostly my penpals are Japanese (or Japanese speaker), since I am learning the language. But actually it could be anyone worldwide as long as she/he can 'compel' me to write them :)

Here are typical letters that I write nowadays

Because I put a limit on my penpals number, I've got bored sometimes to wait for my penpals to reply my letter. To overcome this problem, I do swapping once at the moment. I'll find random people who want to trade tea bags/cards (e.g. valentine card, new year card, etc.) and a little letter; we don't become penpal, but occasionally write to each other.

Typical swapping that I do...

So far, I am more than happy with this hobby. As for Lilico, eventhough we're not sending each other anything yet (well, soon Lilico is going to send her very first letter to me tho :D) but you're already my best-best-friend! I already plan what to write you or what to send you once your letter arrived here. I mean, this friendship quality is what you're seeking in penpaling journey right? And I am soooo glad that I found a bestfriend through this way!

This is my snailmailing journey from 1999-2015, a good time to look back and thankful for everything that I have today. Have a blast everyone, ciao!

xoxo

ps: more pictures of my snailmailing (and my other activities) on my instagram account @lmeilani