Postcrossing!

My sister, Rachel, got us started on something super cool called Postcrossing!  It is a website where you send and receive postcards from around the world!  How cool!  You set up a profile and send your first card.  After you send a card and it has been received, then you will be in the system and start receiving cards.  It's super simple.  After each card of yours is received you will be put back into the system to receive again.  You can send 1 at a time or 100 at a time. 

 

We buy our postcards at Walmart for about 22 cents a piece (I think) and the stamp is $1.05.  So for less than $1.30 you can receive a postcard from around the world!  We just started and Kassidy has sent one to Finland, Germany, Japan, Algeria, Belarus and the Netherlands.  She has received ones from Poland and Japan so far.  The one from Poland was from an 8 year old also, which was really fun!

 

You can request certain themes for postcards and some people have very interesting requests like maps, city views, landscapes, animals, etc.  We try to meet some of their requests, but it's not always possible.  My sister suggested that we write that we do not want any profanity, obscenities or nu*ity so we did in our profile.  We write about basic stuff that tells about our culture and way of life.  If we send a map we tell a little better about where we are on the map, etc.   

 

At first, I was a little weary about doing it.  I'm not super crazy about sharing our address, but we did not do the US exchange.  We only opted for international.  You never send postcards to the person you receive one from, unless you contact them back and ask.  I have thought about doing that with the 8 year old so the girls could be penpals.  We will see. 

 

You should definitely check it out.  I think it is helping Kassidy learn more about other cultures and her geography skills (and mine) will benefit for sure!  She has also requested that we look up the addresses of the ones we send on google maps, which has been pretty fun and interesting!

 

Happy Postcrossing!!

(how almost everyone ends their postcards)

 

Have you ever heard of Postcrossing?  Do your children have penpals?  If so, I would love to learn more about that!