Showing posts with label Adopt-A-Platoon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adopt-A-Platoon. Show all posts
Sunday, May 9, 2010
First Letter
I just finished my first letter to my soldier. It's just a general introduction of myself and it actually took a bit of work. I tend to go off on tangents a lot, and I actually had to write myself a rough draft to avoid that tendency. I definitely had a lot of unnecessary details in the draft, that can wait until a later letter. I believe I started talking about my grandfather's funeral, and I certainly don't want to depress her in my first letter. So I managed to cut that out of the actual letter and just stick to the important stuff. You know, name, address, married, cat, job, where I'm from, that kind of stuff. I know she won't receive the letter for several weeks at least, and I might not ever get a response back, but it's exciting to think that a letter I wrote might be able to remind a soldier fighting for this country a little bit of home.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Adopt a Platoon
A while ago I stumbled upon the Adopt-A-Platoon website and decided to apply. I had forgotten all about it until I got a call last night to confirm my continued interest in supporting an overseas soldier. The lady on the phone asked me to confirm my contact information and explained the process to me.
Adopt-A-Platoon is great, because you can choose to support either 1-4 individual soldiers, or a whole platoon. And you can choose between just being a penpal and committing to writing 1 letter a week until they come home or writing letters and sending a care package once a month. I opted for the penpal. You can still send packages if you want to, but you're not obligated to.
Anyway, during the phone call, the lady kept referring to the potential penpal as "he" "him" "his" etc. Afterwards I wondered if all the soldiers receiving mail are men, which I thought was a bit sexist. After all, there's women over there too, and I'm sure they'd love a few letters as well. But this mystery was cleared up today, when I received an email with a female soldier's information on it. Yay!
First letter to go out this week, that's my goal. However, I should set my definition of "a week" first, since theoretically my week could start today and end next Tuesday. But I think I'll go with the slightly more traditional (in Germany) of Monday-Sunday. So, 1 letter by Sunday... check.
Do you enjoy writing letters and cards? Don't have anyone to send them to? Maybe you can check out Adopt-A-Platoon as well.
Adopt-A-Platoon is great, because you can choose to support either 1-4 individual soldiers, or a whole platoon. And you can choose between just being a penpal and committing to writing 1 letter a week until they come home or writing letters and sending a care package once a month. I opted for the penpal. You can still send packages if you want to, but you're not obligated to.
Anyway, during the phone call, the lady kept referring to the potential penpal as "he" "him" "his" etc. Afterwards I wondered if all the soldiers receiving mail are men, which I thought was a bit sexist. After all, there's women over there too, and I'm sure they'd love a few letters as well. But this mystery was cleared up today, when I received an email with a female soldier's information on it. Yay!
First letter to go out this week, that's my goal. However, I should set my definition of "a week" first, since theoretically my week could start today and end next Tuesday. But I think I'll go with the slightly more traditional (in Germany) of Monday-Sunday. So, 1 letter by Sunday... check.
Do you enjoy writing letters and cards? Don't have anyone to send them to? Maybe you can check out Adopt-A-Platoon as well.
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