(I had to go to Adobe Acrobat to see the pictures, so they weren't really posted on the Quilting board site.)
You are so fortunate to still be in touch with your teen years' pen pal. I wrote for several years to the niece of a neighbor, who lived in Czechoslovakia. She stopped writing without notice, and I found out years later that it was a requirement of her job at the UN not to write to anyone in the USA!