Swap #1

Private swaps are quite common on the Postcrossing site ... members can check a box on their profiles to indicate whether they are interested in these or not. If they say they are, you can send them an email and ask them to swap with you. Of course I've been trying this out. :-)

When I post about swaps here I will only count the actually completed ones. My first ever PX swap was not initiated by me, but by another user - I agreed to the swap, emailed back my address, sent the card, then never heard anything more. I haven't received anything from her, not even a response to my email asking if she's gotten my card. And she's still active on the site. >:-( But I won't be counting swaps like these, and after this post will not be blogging about them either. It's not a big deal, these things sometimes happen and you've just got to let it go. But only completed swaps will get their own blog posts here. :-)

My first successful swap was initiated by me. I found this user, Simona in Lithuania, after just surfing the site. Her profile was interesting - I'm an Elvis fan too ;-) - and she wanted to swap stamps. I kind of collect stamps too - very small scale, but still - and I thought I'd quite like to get some Lithuanian ones. I had plenty of extra Norwegian stamps lying around that I could send. I also had a card showing an interesting animal, which is on her list of interests. I emailed her to see if she was interested, and she was, so I got some stamps together and sent them off to Lithuania.

The card I sent, on November 7th, shows one of my three pet turtles, Raphael, a male red eared slider, Trachemys scripta elegans, out on a walk on the lawn outside my apartment building.

Simona sent me a lovely multiview card from Klaipeda, which is the nearest larger town to where she lives. It looks like a very charming place. :-) The card arrived on November 10th.

I also got these great Lithuanian stamps. And I learned from this swap that Lithuania in Lithuanian is Lietuva. You can learn something new every day! :-D