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My own experience with penpals 杰瑞恩的国际 笔友经历(二)

编者按：Jeroen来自荷兰，是站长在2005年在互联网上认识的笔友。我们都是penpalling的粉丝。在06年的时候， 站长大人曾经和杰瑞恩一起策划用Joomla! 建立“国际笔友交流”的小站，但最终因为“Great Firewall of China”，我和杰瑞恩毕业，工作忙等而暂停。

前不久联系Jeroen的时候，又把我们之前的建立个笔友交流站的“理想”提上了日程。Jeroen会写个Joomla1.5的组件程序，希望到时候可以用在本站，实现注册，资料完善，搜索笔友的功能。

杰瑞恩是个帅小伙，会讲德语，荷兰语，西班牙语和英语，大学专业是机械，曾经来过中国的上海实习。

I don't remember exactly when I started writing penpals, but it must have been somewhere between 1995 and 1999. I was interested in other countries and other languages, but ofcourse I couldn't travel all over the world. So I started writing penpals .. I think I found my first penpal on a message board of ICQ , at that time I still used ICQ regularly. She was from South Korea.. The amazing thing is that I am still in touch with her now and then, though mostly by Instant messenger instead of email. I also had a couple of penpals who wrote snail mail.. Snail mail really has something special, but it doesn't really work for me: it takes too long and my handwriting is too bad.

我具体记不清什么时候开始交笔友的，应该是在95年和99年之间吧。我对其他国家以及其他语言很感兴趣，但是很显然我不可能周游全世界，所以我开始了交笔友。我记得我交的第一个笔友来自ICQ信息，那时我经常使用ICQ。她来自韩国，最酷的事情是我们现在还保持着联系，虽然只是即时聊天简讯而不是email来沟通。我也有一些信笺笔友。手工的信笺有种奇妙的东西在里面，但是对我不怎么吸引。毕竟它时间太长，另外我的笔迹太潦草，也难以辨认。

But I still keep all of the letters I ever got from penpals in one big box. In 2001 I became a member of Mailfriends.com . That's where I found a lot of penpals/mailfriends.Nowadays Mailfriends.com has become quite big, so I think the feeling of a "cosy community" is gone. I found that the first email is always easy (who are you, what are your hobbies, study/work?) but after that it becomes much harder. You have to find some things you have in common and not have to high expectations, otherwise it is doomed to fail. I wrote with people from almost all continents, but I think some continents have more penpals then others.

尽管如此，我依然珍藏着来自各地的笔友的信笺，把他们放在一个大盒子里。在2001年的时候，我成为了mailfriends.com的会员。这个网站也让我结识了很多笔友。今天这个网站已经相当规模，所以我觉得在某种意义上之前的“温馨小圈子”的时代已经没有了。我会发现开始的几封邮件都很简单（比如你是谁，你的爱好，你是工作还是学习），但是随后写信就越来越困难了。你不得不去挖掘一些共同的话题，而同时不要有太高的期望值，不然的话，写信可能坚持不下去。我给每个大洲的人们都写信，但我觉得某些大洲的笔友爱好者比较多。

People from Asian countries are quite easy to find(China, Japan, South Korea) ,but language was often a barrier. Also Europe is quite well represented . And ofcourse the USA as well, although not as many as you would expect from the number of Internet users there. Latin America and Africa as not so well represented, but this is obvious because the number of Internet connections is smaller. And I think for some cultures face-to-face communication and body language is more important then for others. At this moment(August 2006) I still have penpals in China, Spain, Mexico. And some friends in the USA, Thailand , Japan, Russia and South Korea , but I don't speak to them on a regular basis. If you have too many penpals, say more then 4, then it becomes increasingly difficult to respond in a short amount of time and to keep track of the conversations you have with each penpal. I really owe a lot to all the pen pals I ever had and I would like to say "Thank you" to each and every one of them. They widened my view on the world and helped me see things with other eyes. And I believe it even increased my social skills a bit and helped me become a more open minded person.

亚洲国家的笔友最容易找到（中国，日本，韩国等），但语言通畅是一个障碍。欧洲的笔友也好找，美国的也是，虽然并没有其互联网用户那么庞大。拉丁美洲和非洲的笔友相对比较难找，是因为他们本身的互联网用户就很少。我觉得在某些文化里面对面的交流和“身体语言”比其他形式的交流要重要。在我此篇文章的这会（06年8月），我有来自中国，西班牙，墨西哥的笔友，也有一些来自美国，太过，日本，俄罗斯和南韩的笔友，但是这些笔友我不是经常写信交流。如果你有太多的笔友，举个例子，超过4个的话，写信就变得非常困难，特别是要在短时间找对谈话的头绪，而又要回复。我欠我的每一个笔友一声“谢谢”。他们开拓了我的事业，帮助我用其他的角度来理解这个世界。我觉得这些使我增长了我的社交技巧，同时也让我变成一个虚心和思想开明的人。

In all those years I've met several of my penpals in person: If I remember right the first penpal I met was my Japanese penpal.She made a trip through Europe and also visited NL and my town. I also met a penpal from Finland once .More recently I met my very good friend in Spain (she was once here in NL and I visited her for nearly 2 weeks in Spain). And during my internship in Shanghai I finally met my Chinese penpal who also lives in Shanghai. Meeting them was each time a special occasion and it really means a lot to me. Luckily my trust in my penpals has never been abused/betrayed. I wish you the same!
You can try one of the websites below to find a new penpal:

在这些年中我面对面见过很多笔友。如果我记得没错的话第一个见面的笔友是位日本的笔友。她来欧洲旅行，访问了荷兰，来到了我的小镇。我之前也见过来自芬兰的一位笔友。进来我见到了我在西班牙的好朋友（她之前生活在荷兰，那次访问我在西班牙逗留了2周时间）。我在上海实习的一段时间，我也终于见到了我在上海的笔友。每次见到他们都是一个美妙的事情，对我意味着很多。幸运的时候，我的笔友从来没有辜负我的信任，我也没什么不愉快的经历。真心祝你也一样！

最后，你可以试着在http://www.jevontech.com/penpals.html  网站中列出的笔友网站找个新笔友！

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