проект на английском языке "Мое хобби - посткроссинг"

My hobby is Postcrossing.

The main objective of the project is to present my hobby,  to encourage people to try it and to demonstrate my collection of postcards.

The plan:

1. What is Postcrossing and how I discovered it.
2. How it works.
3. My profile and stats.
4. A little about the history of Postcrossing.
5. Why I like Postcrossing.
6. My collection of postcards.

Hello everyone! My name is Lena and I want to tell you about my hobby.

Let me begin with a question. What do you usually find in your mailbox? Bills and ads? This is not my case!  Because since some months I regularly find nice postcards in my mailbox. I have discovered a new hobby for me – Postcrossing. Postcrossing is a hobby where strangers send each other postcards across the world.

I joined to www.postcrossing.com some months ago thanks to my friend. She showed me her collection of postcards from different countries, all the world! And she told me what it is. I had a wish to try it myself and so I did.

What is the aim of Postcrossing? On www.postcrossing.com we can read in the bookmark “About us” : “The goal of this project is to allow people to receive postcards from all over the world, for free. Well, almost free! The main idea is that: if you send a postcard, you will receive at least one back from a random Postcrosser  from somewhere in the world. The element of surprise of receiving postcards from different places in the world (many of which you probably have never heard of) can turn your mailbox into a box of surprises - and who wouldn't like that?”  

Now I will tell you how it works. 

1. You set up a profile. You don’t have to put your real name if you don’t feel comfortable with it.
2. Then add your address, so that you can receive a postcard in exchange. 
3. Request an address from the website.
4. Mail the postcard to the address.
5. Wait to receive a postcard from another random member.
6. Register the received postcard in the system (every card has an ID number). 

Now I want to show you how my profile look like. This site is totally in English.

And here are my statistics. 

Honestly, when I sent the first postcard, I forgot about Postcrossing. But one day I found the postcard from America in my mailbox! I was so excited and I started sending postcards.

The Postcrossing project was started by Paulo Magalhães from Portugal in 2005 while he was a student. Paulo loved to receive mail and postcards in particular; from friends, family or from anywhere in the globe. The more random the place and person, the better. He knew many people shared the same interest, but there was no good way yet to connect them across the planet. And that's how he got the initial idea of creating an online platform to support this offline hobby. The goal was to connect people across the world through postcards, no matter their location, age, gender, race or beliefs. After playing with the idea for a while, Paulo started to create the website in his free time. Friends helped testing, Ana Campos designed the first logo and after much indecision about the name, on July 14th, 2005 the Postcrossing Project website was open to the public. Postcrossing has brought together many people, making the world a smaller place.

Believe me, the Postcrossing is a great fun in free time! In my collection I have … cards at the moment and my collection is growing! I have received the postcards from such countries as the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium, Finland, Slovakia, Belorussia and others.  I have sent … cards. My cards went to India, Indonesia, Japan, Portugal, China, the Netherlands, Finland, the USA, Germany and other countries. The stamps are beautiful too. More than that, the uniqueness of this project is a combination of the latest means of communication (Internet) with a traditional one (postcards).  And of course, Postcrossing helps me to improve my English: all postcards are written in English.

Postcrossing is an amazing experience for me. I love getting surprised by really nice cards. Also Postcrossing has been a way to preserve the handwritten letter.

I have two favourite postcards in my collection: one for the picture, another for the content (text): Adrienne from Atlanta the USA describes how they celebrate Halloween and she decorated her postcard very nicely.

Here are some of the postcards which I’ve sent.

Postcrossing has made me a happier person, that’s for sure. It means a lot to me. It’s great to see that a lot of people share the same passion with me, the passion to seek others for a small message and the feeling of a warm heart. I think I can be proud because I’m one of the 652,112 registered users in 210 different countries!

Maybe you will be the one of us, too?