When I was around 9, my mom read a magazine article about a girl in England who wanted pen pals. I wrote to her. So had hundreds of ladies too that were not her age. She'd received so many pen pals and I was one of the only ones exactly her age, so she asked if I'd like to split some of them with her. And of course she'd be my pen pal too. That was the start of having over 50 pen pals around the world. Some I wrote to into college, but then of course life took over. I started traveling the world and made "real" friends in other countries, but I do often wonder what happened to my childhood pen pals. I tried to find some of them when Facebook came out. My best pen pal was in Hong Kong and her name was Joyce Leong. I think they moved to the USA eventually, but lost track of her. People hardly write letters anymore and I really don't either. I used to send post cards to my relatives and friends once I started traveling a lot. Facebook took care of that though, being able to keep in touch with friends forever. I still have a lot of my pen pal letters though and some of the first stickers I wanted to make were of the countries where I have friends, where I once had pen pals, and places I am very familiar with. Eventually there will be more places, but always best to start with what you know. These are the places I know well.