Welcome to Gaia! ::

I used to have a penpal in New Zealand, one in South Africa, and one in Australia -- not all at the same time mind you. There used to be this magazine that my mom got and there were sort of like classified ads for penpals in it. The drill was to spam out letters to anyone you thought sounded interesting and was near your own age and just hope that someone wrote back.

I didn't end up staying in touch with my penpals for quite as long as I wanted to, although the one in New Zealand lasted through several address changes on her part. Once she wrote about a class trip to a farm wher one of the boys was goofing around in a barn where he was not supposed ot be and the floorboards gave way, dropping him straight into a pile of "manoowah". Well apparently this was supposed to be funny but I didn't get it until I showed the letter to a friend of mine who was from NZ -- the word was apparently a phonetic spelling of "manure"!