e-Pals

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Tony W. is eleven years old. He wrote in with what we think is a good idea... see if you agree:

"Instead of looking for someone to write to, I think it would be better for everyone to meet on the e-Pals page and get to know everyone else, because that way we could all find out a lot about lots of different people instead of just one."

We thought that a splendid idea, so we wrote back to Tony and asked him to tell us about himself. We mentioned a few topics he might like to cover and this is what he told us (edited where necessary) a week or so later:

"I live with my Mum and Dad on the 'Antonia D' and I have to do my lessons on the computer. I can't go to a proper school as we move about too much. My Mum gets my lessons off the Internet and helps me if I get stuck. My Dad helps me with some lessons, too.

I did go to a proper school for a few months, in Spain, but I was not sorry to leave. I did miss some of the other kids for a while but now we are in the Caribbean and I have new friends. I can go on the Internet twice a week, to visit my favourite sites and get my e-mails.

For my birthday, my Mum and Dad gave me a mobile disk (Ed: Tony is talking about a small item that fits in the USB socket on any computer and allows the user to upload and/or download files), so now I can collect pages from the Internet and take them back to the boat to read later. There are 64 megabytes of space on the disk, so I can get lots of pages. I don't get time to write a lot of letters, though, so that is why I think it would be good to just write one, now and then, and send it to this page. Then everyone could see it and I could see their letters too.

One of my favourite sites is http://worldkids.net and I also go to http://www.thekidzpage.com a lot. (Ed: we check out every site before putting the address on any page of MarineZine) My Mum and Dad like the MarineZine - they used to read it when it was called something else and they told me about the Youngsters part.

I never collected anything before but I have just started collecting icons. My Dad said that at least my collection won't take up too much room on the boat! My mum helped me make a special website called My Icon Album and I have found 17 interesting icons so far. They have to be ones I really like, to go in my album.

I like sailing, but I don't know if I will live on a boat when I grow up. Maybe I will, but I would like to have friends that I can play with for a long time."

Thank you Tony, for writing such an interesting letter. Here is a letter from 10-year-old Simon K. (edited where necessary) that arrived in answer to Tony's letter:

" I think that it is a very good idea to all just share. I don't really want to have to keep up writing to just one person but it will be nice if we can just write when we want to and all share each others' letters on the page.

My mom and dad let me go on the Internet for an hour or two at an Internet place every few days when we are at anchor but I am not allowed to stay in there on my own so I always hope they will have lots of e-mails to answer so I can stay longer!

My two favorite sites at the moment are http://www.funology.com/ and http://www.brainpop.com/ and I collect free fonts for my computer (Ed: This letter was typed using a very fancy font but most people would not have been able to see it so we had to change the text to a standard font). So far I have 39 special ones and my favorites are the ones with little pictures instead of letters.

I want to have my own boat when I grow up but I want to live in one place most of the time.

We are going on a special trip in the Christmas vacation. It's a secret where we're going but my dad says I will really like it. Last year we were in Canada and had Christmas in a log cabin about half an hour from the marina. It snowed so hard we had to stay three extra days because the car was stuck! We have been back in the US since summer so I think we will be warmer this Christmas. I hope so.

My best friend, Jimmy, collects icons. He has an awful lot and he made a web site to keep his in too. He is 12 and he says he might send an e-mail to this page if he gets time."

Let's hope that other youngsters are encouraged to make friends through the ePals page too. Why not join our little circle of friends? Write and tell us about yourself and the things you like to do! We also have a new e-mail address for this section (you can use the old one marinezine_youngsters@linnetwoods.com for a while if you want) it is: youngsters@marinezine.com



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