Penpals have almost dried up completely. In about 1975, I started using cassette tapes as you could dictate a lot more on a 90 min cassette than typing on a page. Then in about 1990 we changed to video cassettes and exchanged that way. The postage was really cheap then. For 6c you could send a parcel anywhere in South Africa and a cassette to England or the USA only cost R 1,20 if you sent it as a small packet