As I have often mentioned, I spend a great deal of time bookcrossing (giving and sharing books around the world with others, particularly other bookcrossers).  Through bookcrossing.com, I recently learned about the postcrossing.com site. Because many bookcrossers tend to send postcards to each other (with or without books), one particular bookcrosser mentioned the postcrossing.com site. Also, like many bookcrossers, I collect postcards and decided to check it out. While I had heard that there were sites that allowed users to send postcards back and forth, I never knew the name of any.  Nor, frankly, had I even taken the time to Google information about them, either.

Several weeks ago, I visited the postcard sharing site for the first time, and signed up to send (and hopefully receive) postcards from around the world.  Before a new user can receive the first postcard, the person has to send postcards, each of which is marked with a tracking number, to five different, randomly selected persons.  Then the person has to wait until at least one of them is journaled as having been received before any other names and addresses are given out.  At that point in time, the new user's information is added into the queue.  After that, more postcards can be sent and received, and the number of postcards able to be sent is increased after the site administrators have verification that this is a valid (read: reliable) user.

I sent my first card that very day, and then sent another a day later, and eventually sent over the course of a seven to ten day period a total of five postcards.  I sent my first postcard to an address in Russia, the following to Taiwan, China, and then one to Germany.  Since then I have sent a couple more to Russia and another to Taiwan, China.  Two have been received although the first one I sent three weeks ago has not been received.  Right now, I have four postcards traveling the world, another two have reached their destination, and I can send another one whenever I choose.  I would also guess that someone somewhere has posted a card to me.  Pretty cool, huh?

In the meantime, though, a bookcrosser, who happens to also be a postcrosser, sent me a random postcard welcoming me to postcrossing.  Just to be nice.  Through postcrossing.com my postcard collection will be growing; I'll make new friends (or perhaps anonymous acquaintances might be a better description); and I'll vicariously travel all over the world (or at least read about and see places I've never seen before).  Life is good, and maybe, just maybe, that a postcard sent here and there, hither and yon, might open up a dialogue that makes this world a more peaceful planet.

Now, it is back to the postcard site for another address.