Humans of St. Norbert:

“Starting my junior year of high school, I had a lot of time on my hands. I found something called Postcrossing which is like a worldwide postcard swap so I got into that. I made it a mission of mine to get a piece of mail from every country in the world. I have about 87 countries right now and I only have like two rules when it comes to getting mail. It needs to come though the postal mail so it can’t be somebody who went on a trip and brought me a postcard. And I also can’t pay them for sending me something just because I could cross off the countries really quick by buying something online and have it come from that country. I have this scratch-off map and I color in the countries when I get mail from them. It’s a fun way to keep track of it.

“Sometimes, I randomly Google places in countries and write to them. I wrote to the Greenland equivalent of the DNR because I found their address online. I just wrote them a letter telling them a bit about me and asking them a few questions about Greenland. Three interns from the fish and shellfish department wrote me back! Probably the coolest place I’ve gotten a letter back from was Sudan. I wrote to an international high school there. When I came back from Christmas break my first year at college, in my mailbox was this huge envelope from Sudan. All the kids from their equivalent of the 12th grade had written me back letters! I also got a letter from Antarctica because I found an address of a research base down there. Mail takes a long time sometimes so I sent it away and thought nothing of it. One day, I got this envelope back from Antarctica and it was from the postmaster of the research base.

“When I write letters, I ask people to tell me things like what their favorite part is about living in their country or about a national dish of their country. So I get to know all this information first-hand from people. There’s a lot of ignorance about how life is in other parts of the world so it’s really exciting to get that information directly from the people and hear their experiences. I think my favorite part [of writing letters] is just the surprise that comes with it. With postcards and letters, there’s no tracking so it’s such a surprise when you go to your mailbox and there is something in it.” – Emily Dehmer ’21

If you know someone in a country who would be interested in swapping letters with Emily, you can email her at emily.dehmer@snc.edu.