2. Flat Stanley Is On His Way!

There are now 49 Flat Stanleys en route to their various host homes!

I had mailed Flat Stanleys to 15 different U.S. States on Saturday. As of today he's gone off to visit 23 different U.S. States. We now have Stanleys in or heading to:

Arkansas (Texarkana)
California X2 (Ventura and Los Angeles)
Connecticut (Groton)
Florida X3 (West Palm Beach, Pompano Beach and Orange Park)
Georgia X2 (Atlanta and Grovetown)
Illinois (Zion)
Indiana X2 (Muncie and Anderson)
Kansas (Topeka)
Kentucky (Annville)
Maine (Cherryfield)
Maryland X2 (Indian Head and Cockeysville)
Massachusetts (Fall River)
Nebraska (Omaha)
New Jersey X3 (two in Summit, one in Morris Plains)
New York X3 (Rome, Ridge, Honeoye Falls)
North Carolina (Huntersville)
Ohio X2 (Dayton and Cuyahoga Falls)
Pennsylvania X2 (Lackawaxen and Kunkletown)
Texas (San Antonio)
Vermont X2 (both in Shaftsbury)
Virginia X2 (Alexandria and Ashburn)
Washington (Wenatchee)
Wisconsin (Marshall)

and of course as I mentioned in my last entry, our host from Ventura, California is going to take Stanley on an Alaskan cruise with her, so Stanley will get to see Alaska, too!

And Stanley's host family from Ashburn, Virginia is willing to take him to Washington DC for a visit!

I had mailed Flat Stanley to 6 countries outside of the U.S. on Saturday; now it's 7 as we've added England. But Stanley also went to a couple more homes in both Canada and Australia (New South Wales is becoming quite the hotspot for Flat Stanley!).

We now have Stanleys in:

Australia X4 (one in Queensland and three in New South Wales
Canada X3 (British Columbia, Manitoba and Nova Scotia)
Egypt
England (West Midlands)
Hong Kong
Ireland (Wicklow)
Kyrgyzstan


Other Flat Stanley News:

Stanley made his first car trip yesterday! My mother and sister took him from our home in Port Carbon, Pennsylvania to Shaftsbury Vermont. He traveled approximately five hours, and just over 286 miles, to get there.


I also received confirmation that Stanley and his travel documents all made it safely through email and arrived intact at an inbox in Pompano Beach, Florida. This was necessary because Stanley's Pompano Beach host family wants to take him on vacation with them to New York City on Friday and wanted to be sure he would arrive on time :)

While emailing Stanley to everyone would certainly be faster (and cheaper) than putting Stanley in the mailbox, we will continue with our standard mailings because it seems more "official" that way. We get to "see him off" in the flesh. Well. In the paper. But you know what I mean. :) And we get to do math and figure out how many miles Flat Stanley traveled. And besides I think it's just more fun for people to get snail mail. The anticipation of "will he come today? Ooh, there's the mailman! He's here! Open him up! Let's see what he looks like!" - You can't do that with email :)

Other than that, we are still awaiting confirmation to see whether Flat Stanley will be going to Belgium, Poland, and/or New Zealand. (One of my mom's friends in Omaha said she has a good friend in Poland who she thinks would be interested, she's just waiting to hear back from her to find out for sure. Another person had mentioned asking a friend in Belgium, so I'm waiting to hear back on that, too. And my husband has a friend in New Zealand and he's going to email him and see if he would be interested).

So hopefully those will pan out, and perhaps a few more United States invitations will be forthcoming. I think it would be awesome to put a Flat Stanley in EVERY state in the US! The flood of invitations have definitely slowed down to a trickle and may be running out, so I don't know if that will be feasible, but I'm still pleased to no end with how well this project took off. The fact that throughout the summer we will be getting back approximately 50 Flat Stanleys at a minimum is great!

I will update when I have further news of Flat Stanley and his adventures.

Have a good time on your vacation(s), Stanley(s)!