{"title":"Slowly Story","desc":"Every now and then we received emails from users, happily telling us how they met their best friends, growing buddies or significant others from all over the world through Slowly, which always makes our day that we think, seriously, the world needs more beautiful stories like these.","stories":[{"permalink":"https:\/\/slowly.app\/story\/peapeach\/","img":"https:\/\/slowly.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/peapeach.jpg","nickname":"peapeach","subtitle":"It might sound like a cliche, but I never had the thought that I\u2019d contact with someone regularly from the other side of the world","country":"\ud83c\udde8\ud83c\uddf3 China","featured":false,"summary":"I took off my mask and for the first time I ever tried to be honest.","content":"
until I stumbled upon a movie named \u201cMary and Max<\/em>\u201d ( IMDB<\/a> ). I was touched by the plot, and at that time I happened to be plagued by a bunch of trouble, like insecurities for the future, conflicts between my parents, I had suffered serious depression and med didn\u2019t make much difference. For the first time I Googled \u201chow to find a pen pal\u201d and it guided me to the page of Slowly in App Store. The first day I registered I met Andrew, whom I had a strong feeling that we\u2019d be a perfect match, as I could relate to his bio and I could feel for him. I sent my first letter to him, where I briefly introduced myself. As I had expected, I got my first response from him 3 days later, and our stories began.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Andrew studied humanities at college, while I studied medicine. Despite this we still have pretty much in common, such as, Andrew is fond of writing short stories, and I contribute to a certain magazine in my spare time. Besides, both of us are very into movies, music and learning new languages. We talked about movie plots, bands, urban planning and sensitive topics like politics in our first few letters. I enjoyed myself talking with him through Slowly, but at that time I didn\u2019t expect that he\u2019d change my life in some aspects before long.<\/p>\r\n Andrew lives in Moscow, so it takes 20 hours for our letters to travel. I\u2019ve enjoyed the process of waiting, and I\u2019d feel cheerful to see \u201cone letter is arriving<\/em>\u201d, as it\u2019d come as promised. Though my life was still screwed up, I finally had something to expect every day! One day I had fights with my parents again, and my dad cursed me in hell on the phone. I felt so wronged so I couldn\u2019t help write what had happened in the letter. In for a penny and in for a pound, I decided to unburden myself to him for all the secrets that I\u2019d been holding out on everyone I know in reality in the following letters. For instance, I hated my parents and never felt any love for them, I suffered serious depression, I tried to commit a suicide by jumping out a running car, I entered a top university where I screwed up my life. Much to my surprise, Andrew could felt for me, for he had gone through what I was experiencing. He also had suicidal thoughts before and he told me how he\u2019d managed to get rid of them. I also took his advice about ways to deal with my parents, and it worked. Besides, he shared his funny experience of going for a therapy, and both of us laughed for a while.<\/p>\r\n I\u2019ve been a vain person for more than 20 years. I\u2019m very good at telling lies and hiding myself from others<\/b>, because I have cared too much about what others think about me, and I\u2019d embark on a journey of self-doubt due to even the slightest remarks. I\u2019ve always paid way too much unnecessary attention to my dignity and pride, as a result I\u2019ve been proving myself to everyone and I didn\u2019t permit any kind of failure in my life. However the truth is, my being much too sensitive was a failure itself and it has been the source of all that\u2019s been plaguing me, which I didn\u2019t realize until I met Andrew on Slowly. I took off my mask and for the first time I ever tried to be honest. <\/b>Andrew was like a shrink, he always gave me constructive suggestions that had worked fine. Gradually, I felt that I had the ability to defeat my depression and I didn\u2019t rely on medicine that much anymore. The plot of \u201cMary and Max\u201d came true in a way.<\/p>\r\n But there was still one thing that I concerned. June is the pride month, after carefully asking Andrew\u2019s attitude towards gay people and knowing that he had been helping one of his friends who\u2019s gay in reality, I finally rested assured that bold to come out to him. Soon my concern melted away, as he took it with pleasure, and encouraged me as always. God! I felt so grateful, so lucky to get to know him! I immediately bought the \u201cbest pen pal trophy\u201d stamp in the store and pasted in my next letter.<\/p>\r\n Inspired by this amazing experience, I started my first attempt of writing a long novel in Chinese, where Andrew acts as the prototype of a character as I have designed. He has also been giving me ideas, helping me construct the plot and finding out logical errors through our letters. I\u2019ve regained my passion for life, and again I began looking forward to the future as I would do when I was a kid.<\/p>"},{"id":1866,"permalink":"https:\/\/slowly.app\/story\/rerel\/","img":"https:\/\/slowly.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/rerel.jpg","nickname":"rerel","subtitle":"","country":"\ud83c\uddeb\ud83c\uddf7 France","featured":false,"summary":"Some people go to me to learn some French, and I teach them French with great pleasure!","content":"So \u00e0 friend of mine showed me Slowly a few month ago and I immediately loved it.\r\n\r\nSome people go to me to learn some French, and I teach them French with great pleasure!\r\n\r\nOn my own, I sympathized with a few people from all around the world! A girl from USA, another from Russia, another from Thailand, and another from... Dear, the list is so long!\r\n\r\nWe speak from anything, our studies, our family, our travelling, literature, movies, series, history, how's the life up there... I really made some interesting meetings, and I hope that my penpals did also!\r\n\r\nSlowly is definitely a great application, the way you speak with people is way more interesting than a normal conversation, since the delay somehow pushes you to speak a lot about anything! And letters become more interesting!\r\n\r\nAnd that can be very useful sometimes : my American friend helped me to review a cover letter! And my Russian friend refresh my memories about what I've seen during a trip in Moscow!\r\nIsn't that awesome?\r\n\r\nSo I'm very grateful to my friend who showed me Slowly, and to my new worldwide friends as well !<\/strong>\r\nThanks for reading, and I hope we'll get in touch soon !"},{"id":2181,"permalink":"https:\/\/slowly.app\/story\/soikafy\/","img":"https:\/\/slowly.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/soikafy.jpg","nickname":"soikafy","subtitle":"","country":"\ud83c\uddf1\ud83c\uddfb Latvia","featured":false,"summary":"Now I also have a big new dream to buy a ticket to South Korea and fly to Seoul to meet my awesome soulmate!","content":"Hello there!\r\nMy name is Julia and I am just a regular girl from a little European country called Latvia.\r\n\r\nThis is the story of how I met my amazing soulmate here.\r\n\r\nIt all started in June 2019.\r\nI was having another of my sleepless nights in my room.At that time I was struggling from depression and was in despair.I had lost contact with my friends and was alone for a long time.There was no one to talk and share my thoughts to.\r\n\r\nAt night between June 15-16th I was searching up for some app or game to cheer me up and make me forget about my sadness for some time.\r\n\r\nInstead of finding a game I saw an app in my recommendations on the app store. I started to get interested and decided to give it a try because it sounded worth a try.\r\n\r\nI don't really like those online social medias where many people try to get to know you by your appearance instead of your personality. But this app didn't have the feature of putting your photo as an avatar. You have to make your own cartoony character, which I really enjoyed. I got to admit I spent a long time creating it but it was such fun! I tagged my interests and started using the app.\r\n\r\nI was anxious to write anyone here so I didn't do it until the next day.\r\n\r\nWhen I got the courage to do it I opened the explore page and started scrolling threw different people on my list.\r\n\r\nIt was then I chose to write my first letter to this person.Something felt good about this person. It is hard to tell if it was fate or a good coincidence. But her profile caught my eye first. Her profile name was \".sooyaaa\". All have read in the profile is that she is from South Korea and she is my age and has good English language skills.\r\n\r\nSo I wrote her a few sentences introducing myself and went back to sleep.\r\n\r\nAfter some time I received a notification on slowly.\r\nI got a reply!\r\n\r\nMy emotions were hard to explain at that moment. I was shocked, happy and nervous at the same time.<\/strong> It's difficult to tell which one I experienced more.\r\n\r\nAfter opening and reading her letter I could feel the positive emotions and vibes there. I could see she put some effort in writing the letter too. I got excited and interested so I continued replying to her.\r\n\r\nAs the time went on and on our conversations begin to grow deeper and deeper and we became very close to each other.\r\n\r\nWe went from talking about our countries and cultures time from time to discussing our common interests, thoughts and just daily talks everyday.\r\n\r\nSo many things have happened between us which made us closer and closer day by day.\r\n\r\nWe still talk everyday on Slowly and I hope that soon we will try to voicemail each other or even video chat as the time goes!\r\n\r\nNow I also have a big new dream to buy a ticket to South Korea and fly to Seoul to meet my awesome soulmate!<\/strong>\r\n\r\nI hope this dream will come true one day.\r\n\r\nAfter meeting her later I also found some new good friends from another countries near me or far-far away~\r\n\r\nI have learned a lot about other cultures because of them and we still keep contact as well \ud83d\ude04\r\n\r\nI want to thank Slowly team very much for giving us people the opportunity to find our soulmates and new close friends through your app.You did an incredible thing by creating this app and continue improving Slowly even these days.\r\n\r\nI recommend everyone who likes to communicate, meet new people or who is lonely to try this app."},{"id":3699,"permalink":"https:\/\/slowly.app\/story\/segate\/","img":"https:\/\/slowly.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/segate.jpg","nickname":"segate","subtitle":"With Slowly, I connected the whole world. Through the music.","country":"\ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\uddf1 Poland","featured":false,"summary":"With Slowly, I connected the whole world. Through the music.","content":"It all started by accident. I found the application on a boring day, when I had nothing to do and only willing this day to end. I installed it without knowing exactly what it was for.\r\n\r\nThe idea of \u200b\u200bcommunicating in this way inspired me to create something extraordinary. Is there anything more universal in the world than music? Everyone likes to listen to music. Everyone likes to get to know a new one. I knew this was the only place on the internet where people would want to read my long message and show interest. They will give me their time and attention. And so it happened. Because here everything is ... SLOWLY. Contrary to the pace of our lives today.\r\n\r\nThanks to the great people I met here and had the pleasure to exchange lists, I made Spotify playlists with songs from over 100 different countries, in different languages, in different genres, from different years.<\/strong> Each song is someone's story. Sung in his native language, bringing a unique atmosphere and feelings. So it's easy to count how many people got involved in it. One song = one person. And it keeps growing all the time. I'm not going to stop there. I want to collect songs from as many countries and in as many languages \u200b\u200bas possible. I spent many hours exploring their history, lyrics, and many other things. That\u2019s great way to learn new things. Easy and pleasant.\r\n\r\nI have contact with many people all the time. The music was a good start for further conversation on other topics. And also the beginning of a friendship. Let's connect people.\r\n\r\nI wish this story was an inspiration. For learning and creating interesting things. To be creative. The Internet offers unlimited possibilities.\r\n\r\nFor those who are interested, the link to the playlist:\r\nhttps:\/\/spoti.fi\/2lH6OHk<\/a>\r\n\r\n