practice my German

I forgot I’d requested this, but I just got a packet in the mail from letternet yesterday with addresses of willing snail mail German penpals.

I’ll totally do this.

But what does one say to a penpal, especially in another language, one I’m not all that great at? I’ve never had a penpal before.

I took German I-IV as an undergraduate and just fell in love with the language. I took an extra German class (focused on German opera) just for the fun of it. Then I took a course in reading German to fulfill the foreign language requirement of my Ph.D. program.

But I have nowhere to practice really using the language. I have quite a few books in German, including not only textbooks, but novels, short fiction, poetry. If I were more motivated or had to read less for my regular work (studying and teaching American literature) I would try to spend more time reading those, but it’s hard.

What I need is a friendly online penpal, I think.