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Guten Tag

I joined Interpalsdotnet awhile back and made friends with three most interesting people: Luca, Robby, and VV (formally, Veronica).

Luca is a 24-year-old punk rock Italian guy. He's from Rimini, and going to school for travel and tourism management. He speaks English, German, Italian, and Norwegian.

He's hilarious. And after just a few conversations, he's introduced me to a good handful of new and excellent bands. And some of those bands sing in Italian. It's exciting!

It's interesting to experience such unusual cultural differences. You wouldn't think there would be many between Italians and Americans, per se. But there are. One of the very first times we talked, he signed his message with 'kisses dear.' At first I was slightly put off by this, but then I realized it's probably standard procedure for Italians.

Either way, I didn't exactly take offense to it.

Opposite how I feel when Americans do it, there's something forgivable about a foreigner kissing at me. I guess it has to do with the assumed innocence of it -- I think to myself, 'oh they do that all the time in Italy...' or 'he meant the best of compliments...'

And truthfully, it feels more flattering when some hunky Italian kisses at me ... much more flattering than say, some nasty American truck driver. I'd castrate one of those.

Anyhow, I enjoy talking with Luca because he's interesting. He's involved with traveling; in fact, right now he's in Germany working as an au-pair in Reisenbeck-Horstel. He's got ambition and many goals. And I like talking music with him.

It's my turn to leak some lesser-known American punk bands to him. I'm thinking of going Rehasher on him ... I think Rehasher and Rise Against! will be the two bands I suggest the first time around. And I have to look into some ska music for him. I'm not sure which ska bands to recommend just yet.

Robby is another guy I've met on the pen pals site. He's 23 and from Reggio nell'Emelia, Italy. He's the very first person I wrote to on Interpals and we instantly hit it off.

One thing I noticed about the site is that most people I found interesting had recently joined. It's still a fairly small community of potential pen pals. I don't mind that though.

I only joined there to meet a few people from different cultures. I haven't been a member for a full month yet and I've already accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.

When I first talked to Robby, he was working in the exports department of an Italian company, living on his own, going to the gym every day during lunch, and photographing things as a hobby.

Already, since meeting him, he's been given a job for a local newspaper as one of their photographers! On his very first day, they assigned him to several jobs and selected NINE of his images to be published -- one of which was front page material!

I like Robby because he's funny. He's a very talented photographer (Canon, baby!) and he's happy and friendly. Everyone on the site is happy and friendly. I guess that's because they're all there to meet pen pals. But Robby likes to talk about life and traveling and photography and those are all things I like to talk about as well.

Anyhow. We're fast friends.

And lastly, VV. VV is the only girl I've felt a connection with on the site. She's a 24-year-old girl from China. She makes a living as an English translator, lives with her once-boyfriend, and has very much in common with me.

She tries to encourage her friends and family to recycle and reuse products; they think she's a little on the crazy side. She doesn't use plastic bags anymore. And she's been investigating and trying new and environmentally friendly ways of life.

She and I started writing emails back and forth, rather than message on interpals. The site is sometimes unreliable. But I haven't gotten to that point with the guys yet.

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