write more letters by hand

that I’ve gotten very behind on correspondence of all kinds and media over the summer, but have been pulling the stops out to get caught up – not going for perfection so much as just doing my best to be relevant and make contact again. It feels good to be nearly there, and think about blowing the dust off some long-unused pages of the address book…

A load of stuff seems to be amassing under this goal… Must get on with it!

• Easter eggs & card for T&K
• Easter cards for I-sensei and M-sensei
• Easter egg for K while I’m at it

• know letter is on its way from D, could start writing
• letter to OB

today I received (well actually very cunningly devised a plan by which I and all my colleagues received) a proper seal and sealing wax. I have been looking for one of these for soooo long and had kind of given up – but then where did they have them but Harrods, of course, dahling.

I can’t wait to get it home and give it a go!! It is so seriously beautiful!

bundle of hand-written letters and cards to the post office today!! I was thinking about this a lot last night as I was writing them, how writing letters is a really lovely way of expressing yourself, releasing some feelings, sending a representation of you at that moment in time off in an envelope somewhere to some part of the world…

So I have a couple of “non-replies” (ie starting from my side!) coming up and then I guess I will be waiting to get something back. I’m glad I’ve been able to keep this up without having the goal live on my list. Maybe I’ll expand this and join postcrossing or write to a sponsor-child or something.

but I’m marking it done as I think I’ve gotten into the habit and am much better about keeping up with replies, and I’ve remembered how much I enjoy writing letters. Also it was one of my original 2006 New Year’s Ressies so I’m making way for new focal points for 2007!

3 letters and a bunch of e-mails, about half in Japanese. I procrastinate on these so much but it feels so good to do them – especially when I realise that it’s not about writing a load and having to make it really perfect, but just about putting across what I want to say. I need to remember how good it feels to do that!

So I just have a couple more e-mails to go and then all my contacts for the Japan trip will be done, one more small hurdle out of the way!

to my bestest true penpal… awwwwwwww and it feels so good. Just spilling it all out on the page. I would totally forget how to do it if I didn’t do it every now and again but it’s so cool to have a friend who’s happy to read anything!!

Got one Japanese one in the tray… should try and get onto that this week.

had a couple more last week and now have to write the ones for Japan this week too. Will make a comprehensive list later (it helps to do this after I’ve made a start, I find sometimes!)

Yup, will be focusing on this this week!

• KH
• PS
• CH
• B
• NS

hahaha, the correspondence gods are smiling on me :)

I got a letter last night from my old Japanese teacher in reply to the one I sent last month with one of my old translation pieces in Japanese – just cos I thought she might be interested! She sent me back a 3-page grammar exposition and marked up a copy of the Japanese letter I’d written her in red pen so I could learn from it – unbelievable! I cannot get over the kindness and dedication of people who already helped me so much the three years I was there. I also thought, that’s just the thing I would do for one of my ex-students – I’m starting to think we’re kindred spirits lol.

When I got home tired after the movie last night I couldn’t quite face reading the whole thing though!! I think this one will take quite a few sittings to form a well-crafted reply, but that makes it kinda fun, right? Sorts me out for what I’ll be doing this weekend!!