Postcrossing Blog

Remember Audrey (aka audreyyung), the little girl from Macao that we featured on the blog some years ago? Audrey is now 8 years old, and has received so many postcards through Postcrossing and other swaps that she made her own postcard exhibition!

The exhibition took place last month at the Fundação Rui Cunha, in Macao. The postcards were hanged around the room in thin wires within reach so that the visitors could interact with them, and there were also posters in 3 languages explaining Postcrossing. Despite the current circumstances, lots of people visited (including her classmates and teachers!) and Audrey was even interviewed for the local TV and radio stations, as well as the Macao Daily newspaper!

All the images on this post came from the Fundação Rui Cunha website, where you can browse more photos from the exhibition and even see a video of the event. We love how the exhibition turned out, and are super proud of Audrey and her dad Alan’s achievements — well done! 🎉

We’ve written before about the Underwater Postoffice in Vanuatu, and we thought at the time it was the only place you could post a letter underwater in the world.

Well, turns out that isn’t quite true! Postcrosser Cindy (aka cindybeaule) let us know about an underwater post box in Susami, Japan, which was put in place in 1999 as part of a fair to promote the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trail. It’s a collaboration between the former postmaster, a man called Toshihiko Matsumoto, and the local diving community. Waterproof postcards are sold in the dive shop, and you have to write your message using waterproof oil-based markers, so the message won’t wash off.

You need diving gear to even reach the post box, because it’s 10 metres below the surface. It’s actually in the Guinness Book of World Records because it’s the deepest post box in the world, and they have a certificate to prove it! The boxes are made of cast-iron, so there are actually two used in rotation, so they can be cleaned and repainted.

I even did some more poking around, and it turns out there are a few other underwater post boxes. There’s one in the Malaysian island of Mataking, another one in the Jemeluk Bay Underwater Gallery in Indonesia, and two “dry” ones: an underwater observatory in the US Virgin Islands and the Risør Underwater Post Office in Norway.

You can watch a whole mini-documentary about the post box in Susami on Youtube—we were amazed to learn that there had been over 38,000 special waterproof postcards sent from this underwater post box at the time it was filmed in 2018. I wonder if any Postcrossers have ever sent or received a card from Susami…? Do let us know!

In October last year, Ethan (aka Ebot) took part in a Postcrossing meeting in his hometown of Tampa, Florida, his first time attending one. The postcrossers there were charmed by this young postcrossers’s curiosity about the world, geography and stamps, and his enthusiasm for postcards! They suggested we interviewed him on the blog, so here he is, to tell us all about his favorite postcard, and the green initiative that he started together with his brother some years ago!

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

I came across Postcrossing as I was searching for pen pals a few years ago. After I looked into it a bit, I was instantly hooked because the thought of sending and receiving postcards from all over the world blew my mind!

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

My favorite hobby is playing drums. I’ve been doing it for about 6 years and recently got my own electric drum set which I practice on almost every day!

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your post office or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

I store most of the postcards I’ve received in special cardboard boxes I created myself out of shipping boxes.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

My favorite postcard I’ve received during my time on Postcrossing is a card from a postal museum in Hungary. The front of the card is amazing with all the vintage postal contraptions and there is a spectacular moon landing themed stamp on the back!

Have you been surprised by any place that you have received a postcard from or sent a postcard to?

I was surprised to get an amazing card from Kazakhstan after 63 days!

Have you met any other members in real life?

Yes! I’ve been able to go to two Postcrossing meetup events in my area. One was in October 2019, and the other in January 2020. Both of the events were very fun and I even designed a meetup card for one of them!

Is there anything that you are passionate about?

My brother and I started our environmental organization called “Green Gasparilla”, about 5 years ago. The Gasparilla Parade occurs every January in Tampa. It is a mock pirate evasion where one main pirate ship and a few thousand other boats pass through the channel throwing cheap plastic strands of beads over the water to people on shore. As you can imagine, not everyone has perfect aim and over 50% of the beads land in the water and sink to the bottom. The goal of our organization is to combat this very harmful pollution, by stopping it and holding diver cleanups.

In the past few years, we have held 3 diver cleanup events with over 30 divers each time. Also, within the past year we have been able to work with the mayor of Tampa to create a campaign called “Bead Free Bay” to educate citizens of Tampa on the proper way to safely celebrate the parade without throwing beads over the water. We even created a PSA video that was posted all over the city’s social media.

Our work is definitely not done, but we have made lots of progress. I hope that this inspires people to speak up and do something if our ecosystem is being exploited in their community.

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

Every country has inventors, talented people who brought something new to the world. Maybe it’s a novel product or an ingenious process, a breakthrough in some field of science… or maybe a cultural invention, like a new musical instrument or a different way to look at things! This month, we’re exploring these inventions and sharing some of our country’s creative heritage with the world.

So, I’ll go first. It’s a hard job to pick one of the Portuguese inventions… but I think one of the earliest ones we’re taught in school is the sea astrolabe.

This is an instrument that was used by sailors to determine their location at sea, based on the altitude of the sun at noon or of a known star at its peak, during the night. By measuring the angle of the star with the horizon, they could calculate the latitude of their ship in the globe, thus getting the information they needed to guide the ships to the right destinations. The oldest Portuguese astrolabe was discovered a few years ago in the wreck site of the ship Esmeralda, which sank in 1503 off the coast of Oman.

What about your country? Which inventions did your fellow citizens bring to the world, and which are you most proud of? Do share these in the postcards you write this month… and also in the comments below, if you can — we’re always curious to learn new things! 😊

Remember last year, when the Postcrossing community celebrated the 150^th anniversary of postcards? Thanks to you all, October 1, 2019 was a day filled with festivities, cake, friendship… and so, so many postcards! It was truly a happy day, in which our favorite means of communication was celebrated across the globe.

So when the day was over and the party was done, we thought… wouldn’t it be great if there was a permanent day in the calendar in which postcards were celebrated every year? 🤔 A day in which we send postcards and talk about them non-stop, teach kids how to write their first cards and just generally spread the joys of happy mail! The more we thought about it, the more it made sense, and many of you seemed to agree, going by your enthusiastic response to last year’s events.

So today, we’re happy to announce that October 1^st, the day in which the first ever postcard was sent, will henceforth be known as World Postcard Day! 🎉

A “World Day of…” becomes a thing if enough people celebrate it, so it’s up to YOU to help put this day on the calendar — and truthfully, we couldn’t think of anyone better than the Postcrossing community to start this movement.

So how can you take part and celebrate this special day?

First of all, mark a big red circle around October 1^st on your calendar and be prepared to write LOTS of postcards! This will be the day of the year to send postcards to all your friends, relatives, people you admire, those who could use a little support or cheering up, your mail carrier, or even to strangers. Plus, if you request a postcard through Postcrossing on October 1^st, you’ll even receive a special badge on your profile when that postcard arrives.

Last year, quite a few of you got in touch with your local libraries and offered to showcase your postcard collections, resulting in lots of colorful displays. If there is a library or another suitable location in your area, we encourage you to contact them about the possibility of doing a display, or maybe even holding a small postcard-writing workshop (if it’s safe for you to do so where you live).

Although in-person meetups are not encouraged this year, we can still get together online to show our favorite postcards or write them as a group. If you’re thinking of organizing an event, consider planning some activities ahead to make it more interesting (maybe a quiz about the history of postcards, or a game of postcard bingo) and let us know about it so that we can add it to the World Postcard Day’s calendar of events.

Together with a few postcrossers, we’re currently working on a lesson plan for teachers to introduce the little ones to the joys of making and writing postcards, and help the next generation get started on the art of postcard writing! If you’re a teacher or a librarian and have suggestions, or you’d like to make sure you receive it as soon as it’s done, do get in touch.

Also, we’ve been working with our friends at Finepaper who have been running a postcard design competition for Portuguese art students to make an official postcard for this year’s event. In a few weeks, the final design will be chosen, and this postcard will be made available on the World Postcard Day website, for all to download and print.

And last but not least, help spread the word! There’s a lot of us, and if everyone tells someone about the World Postcard Day, we’ll turn the day into a huge postcard party. 🎉 Send your friends to worldpostcardday.com, or use the hashtag #worldpostcardday on your social media posts.

If you have more ideas on how to celebrate the World Postcard Day, feel free to get in touch or leave a comment below. That’s all for today — stay tuned for more updates soon, and let’s get this party started!