Today I'm super happy to introduce to you as my guest the gorgeous Kate. Her instagram profile was one of the first ones I started to follow when I found the pen pal community, and I fell in love for her mail art and sweet personality. I hope that, by reading her answers, you get as excited as her by snail mail :)
Talk a
little about yourself ( or name,who are you, where you live, what you do etc)
My name is
Kate, I’m a Russian girl who lives in a beautiful Siberian city – Barnaul J This year I’ll graduate the Linguistic University
At the
moment I am having my second teaching practice at school. So I teach kids
English for 2 months. At the same time I work in my dad’s travel agency, which
we started 3 months agoJ so this time is a lot tiring and I
almost have no time to be enjoying my favorite thing – snail mail.
When, and how
you got into snail mail?
Almost all
my life I was unaware of the beautiful world of snail mail. I never cared for
it. Till in May, 2011 my best friend told me about Postcrossing. I joined it
and started sending cards to random people, it was hard to find postcards or
any pretty stationery in my city, so I was actually sending my handmade cards.
I also mentioned in my profile I was fond of handmade cards, I always say that
handmade things have soul in them, and always more appreciatedJ In
June 2011 I received my first official postcrossing card from the USA. I was
running of happiness all over the place laughing and showing it to everyone:D
haha! That’s how my love for snail mail began. I sent a lot! Sent a card back
to everyone who sent me an official! Searched for users, interested in direct
swaps! I got so obsessed :D Most of those people never sent me anything back,
but I was very happy with what I received anyway J I just love that feeling of
excitement when I am checking my mailbox! There’s nothing compared to that
childish pure happiness, and I still have it!
So I was
happily enjoying little postcard swaps and postcrossing officials until I
registered on Instagram in the Autumn 2013 and found my first penfriends!
That’s how I realized – I loved letters! A pretty postcard can never be
compared to the feelings and thoughts your penfriend shares with you! And it’s
so precious to me!
What you
enjoy the most about snail mail and what you dislike the most?
I love
learning more about people abroad, love reading their stories and share mine
with them too! And I love making little surprises, sending something along with
the letterJ it always feels so good! and of course every
time I enjoy decorating my mail, sparing time to make the mail I send beautiful J
And well
what I dislike is that many people never reply my mails, or sometimes I receive
totally effortless mails. And it feels like it took them not more than 15 mins
to prepare the mail for me. Which, I am sure you understand, is not very
pleasing. When I spend hours working on a letter, making it look nice and
really care about a person, such careless replies make me feel unneeded.
Would you
change or improve something in your country’s postal service?
All I want
is that every single mail I send reaches its destination and the mail, which is
sent to me also reaches me. So many letters and cards get lost on the way and I
am sad about it, and safety also matters a lot, I wish no mail got torn or
creased, and of course time – sometimes it takes months(!) to reach the
mailbox!
Could you
tell one of the most memorable or special things you received so far?
The most
special and amazing mail I have ever received was from my very dear friend. He
sent me a huge poster (60x90cm) of himself (he’s a photographer and the kind of
“selfie” he can take is really incredible!:D I was really crazy about that
picture and he got it printed for me) so he sent it in a tube and a courier
handed it right to me J and another sweet thing was that he
wrote a beautiful letter on the back side of the poster, and even drew some
cute cats there and decorated it so wonderfully! Can’t even describe how happy
I felt to receive it! And now it’s happily posted in my room J
Can you
describe in one word the feeling of receiving mail?
There are
of course so many words crossing my mind now :D And that exciting feeling of
getting a mail can hardly be compared to anything else! But if I would try to
put it in one word it is INSPIRATION J
Thank you so Kate for sharing so much with us. If you wanna know more about Kate and keep update of her outgoing and incoming mail, just follow her on Instagram.
Ps: As you can see the blog layout and design has changed. What do you think? did you like it? Ah, Now I can finally answer to your comments and I'm really looking forward to it :)
Mnogo lyubvi
Vi <3
