From Kayla:
One of my goals this year is to send a piece of mail every day. I still have plenty of thank-yous and greetings to catch up on, but another fun way to send and receive mail is through Postcrossing.
Postcrossing is a postcard exchange that is easy to join and participate in. You can send and receive postcards from all over the world.
Go to Postcrossing to sign up. To begin, request an address to send a postcard to. You will receive a code to write on the card. When the person receives your card and registers the code, your address will be sent to someone else.
Be sure to update your profile with the kinds of postcards you like and the messages you enjoy. This has been so rewarding for me! As a culinary teacher, I am interested in knowing what everyday food is like around the globe, so I asked people to tell me about their favorite local dish. Imagine my surprise when I received this card from Germany:
Best regards from Bremen! On this card you can see different points of interests of our city. In the north of Germany we have a special meal named “Grunkohl.” The English word for it is ‘kale’ I think.
After some googling, I realized she perfectly described a dish that in our family we call “Grandma Kramer Kale.” Our family has been eating kale long before it took over as a health food craze so it was fun to understand the “official” name for our favorite family dish.
Postcards are fairly inexpensive. Most people prefer tourist cards so I stock up on Iowa-themed cards at the local pharmacy. When people ask for art cards I send a Grant Wood painting which is easy for me to find because he was born in my county.
Postage costs just $.30 in the United States. You can ask for cards within the states or international only. For international mail, I buy stamps by the book at the post office. The price to send a postcard anywhere in the world is $1.10. Having a single stamp is easy but I like to collect many different stamps and use several to add up to the rate.
I highly encourage you giving Postcrossing a try if you like mail and would like to connect with friendly people all over the world.
Very interesting post :) Wonderful to read that this type of engagement is still being used in today’s world. Thanks for sharing.
What a fun thing to do! It reminds me of the pen pal exchange when I was a kid. Mine was from Japan and we wrote to each other for several years.
Hi, Kayla, I am a postcrosser too! I started it with my kindergarten students and then continued after I retired. Postcards are hard to find in my town but I look for them at rest stops on the NY State Thruway and ask my sons to bring them when they visit from out of state. I see you can order them (theme related) from Amazon so that might be my next purchase. I’m like a little kid when I get mail! Ironically, I had just requested 3 addresses immediately before I read the your blog post. Just FYI though….postage is 35¢ in the US and $1.15 internationally. It went up in January. Happy post crossing. :-)
Hi Kayla. Such a lovely idea. I just signed up and have written my first PC. I used to send PCs to my mother on a weekly basis so I picked them up everywhere I went. I will be happy to have a reason to start that habit up again. Thanks for the heads up.
That sounds fun, but definitely have to put the idea on the back burner till crazy end of school stuff is done. Thanks for the information.
Kayla – I was a “Postcrosser” for a while. I have lots of postcards from around the world! It is getting harder and harder to find postcards nowdays for the area that I live in. I may start postcrossing again someday – when I retire. I still get notices once in a while that people “favorite” some of the cards that I have sent – and they are Disney postcards!
Thank you very sharing information about “Post crossing” especially that this is something I didn’t know about! Seems interesting & fun ~ a lot like having a pen pay in my younger years!
Postcards are collected by my family. I have the post cards that my grandparents had. When Nonno was in the hospital my grandmother would read them to him and together they would remember about “old” times. When my parents house was broken up, I took the postcards and have a shoe box of memories from that generation. On to this generation, my kids send post cards when they are traveling so I have my own box of cards to read to the grand kids!!!! Fun time.
Hi, Kayla. I did Postcrossing for about five years but stopped when it got a bit expensive for my fixed income. I wish I could continue, but during my participation I did assemble a great collection of (mostly) international postcards. Thanks for the reminder of this great organization.
What do you do with them after you collect them?
Hi Kayla! I have been sending postcards too. A friend on instagram got me started. Its wonderful. Through this friend I found out about Russ Romano. He has a Postacrds for Good campaign (http://www.postcardsforgood.com/). He features people who are doing it tough and you send them a postacrd. They are USA based recipients. I have been sending them even though I am in Australia. Anyway i thought you might enjoy doing this too.
I wanted to let you know that because of this post, the library where I work signed up for Postcrossing as part of our summer reading program. We have only received two cards so far but the children are excited about it. Thank you!