The Land Down Unda....
So since we've been on the topic of Australia lately in class, I figured I would tell you about my pen pal! ( Ive google-earthed a pic of her house in toowoomba, queensland - just to show you! i've been obsessed with googlearth lately)
So here goes, you're probably wondering how did she end up with a pen pal in australia? thats like halfway across the world?!
As it so happens, back in the day ( which was always a wednesday....) in third grade we were doing a project for music class on this song about "John Tucker". That day I went home and told my mom all about what I had learned about Australia and how excited I was for this project. She mentioned that my sister's physical therapist / aide, Ms. Lackey, had family in Australia and a niece about my age. So she sent a note with my sister to school, and sure enough when I came home from school the following day, there on the kitchen counter was an address for a girl named Sarah in australia.
I couldn't wait! I always had wanted a pen pal, and here was my chance. So I sat down that night and wrote a letter introducing myself to Sarah, and asking if she knew anything about what we were studying in my music class. A week or so later I got a package in the mail from her family that was filled with packets of information as well as two mixed cassettes ( "a cassette, whats that?". yes , this was the nineties). One was a mix of some Australian folk songs and the other was a mixed tape of some popular music of the times in Australia.
Soon we began sending back and forth packages filled with letters, pictures, photo albums, tshirts, post cards, jewelry, CDs and anything you could think of. Each year we always send each other christmas and birthday presents! Its so fun, this year she even sent me a few band t shirts from concerts in Sydney (Hinder, and a few other alternative indie bands). She also says that she is going to send me t shirt from her university! I am so excited! The most recent band that she's sent me music from is Kisschasy, which I really love.
(Opinions won't keep you warm at night - Kisschasy)
( Kisschasy - The Do Do's and Whoa - oh's)
I really want to go study there abroad for a year perhaps my junior year. I think it would be a blast, because one of her friends actually studied here for a year!
Right now I am actually working on puttitng together a christmas package for her ( because it takes about a few weeks to get it there on a college kids budget), so far i have: state radio t shirt, mixed cd (including dispatch, badfish, barefoot truth, state radio, sublime, cake , etc), a few posters from higher ground and a UVM t shirt.
So if you see me sporting a University of Southern Queensland Shirt around campus, you'll know why!
_charlotte snowe
4 comments:
i once had a pen pal in Stevenage, England. i wonder what ever happened to him... his name was John Smith. i kid you not.
in my elementary school the teachers were always trying to make us get pen pals. i have had many pen pals, none of them i remember. i always wanted to get a real pen pal that actually wanted to be a pen pal. instead i ended up with a pen pal from russia who could not spell the simplest words in english.
At some point during school I'd heard about the concept of a pen pal, but none of my teachers ever actually succeeded in getting a program going. The closest one ever got was my senior English teacher, which at the very beginning seemed like it wasn't going to go through since we were so old. She almost had a teacher in Africa willing to do it, we even wrote the letters ahead of time, but in the end that teacher left the country, although I don't know why.
those bands are pretty cool, however i did enjoy the first video the guy who introduced them said they "daybooed" and had that on repeat for 3 or 4 times before i actually let the song play haah. i had a penpal once, in 3rd grade, our teacher organized it and we all got matched up with someone from a class in florida. my penpals name was laura lovelace barnes, i remember it because her middlename was so weird. she sent me 1 letter introducing herself and then never wrote back. i wish she was cool like yours and sent me cool stuff. laura, are you out there?
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