Postcrossing

I joined Postcrossing last night and am already addicted.  Now, I have never been a postcard person.  I don't collect them and I rarely send (or receive) them.  However, all that is about to change with Postcrossing.

The premise is that you submit your address to the site and it's entered into their private database.  You then request an address (or five, if you're me) to send postcards to.  Here comes the cool part: this is an international website!  The addresses I got were for Russia, the USA, Germany, the Netherlands and even the Republic of Belarus! 

Today, I bought five local Marietta, GA postcards and wrote nice messages on them to send out to my new international friends.  I'm going to the post office to mail them and I'm praying that it won't be too expensive.  (I haven't sent international mail in recent years so I'm slightly terrified.  I am a broke college student after all.)

After I send them out, the boring, waiting part happens.  Once my recipients get their postcards in the mail, they go on the Postcrossing website and "register" their postcard.  Basically, I write a unique code on the postcard and they enter that code on the site once they receive their mail.  Once that code has been registered, my name is given out to a new, entirely different person so that I am now the recipient of a random postcard! 

The whole thing is simply magical and a great reminder that although the world is big, we're all connected in one way or another.  What are you doing?  Go join Postcrossing already!
Note: I'm not including postcards sent/received in my 365 letter count.  The messages are too brief to justify!  However, I will be keeping track of them here separately.