LOVE BITES: Letters of Love
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What inspired the host to launch the Love Bites mini‑series?
This is an ABC podcast.
It might not come as much of a surprise, but I love love. Nothing makes me gooey like hearing about people connecting in authentic ways. And hey, it helps if it's an amazing story to boot. A meet cute that felt like fate. Best friends finally realising they're soulmates. Love triumphing against all odds. It's the fuzzy stuff, you know? I'm Nat Tanchich and welcome to our mini-series, Love Bites. Bite-sized, rom-com-worthy love stories as long as a song. Usually on The Hookup, I educate you on relationship and sex issues and help solve your romantic dilemmas. But for the next little while, we're also injecting a little love into your life with a rom-com-worthy tale that I hope makes you believe again.
How did Adrian’s school‑leadership program lead to his first pen‑pal letter?
You know, those kinds of stories where it felt like fate or the boost you get from a relationship weathering against all odds. I don't know. I just think we need that right now. I don't really believe in fate, but this story Kind of made me question that. It's almost too amazing to be true. See, when he was younger, hookup listener Adrian decided to write a letter to a stranger. After leaving a school leadership program, he was lonely and ended up with a pen pal, Toria. Now, what's so special about that? Well, they literally drew the same number. I'll let them explain.
There's a program in Victoria called the School for Student Leadership, has three campuses around Victoria.
Why did Adrian and Toria feel an instant connection after discovering they shared the same number?
And I went in term three of 2014 when I was in year nine and there were headcount numbers there. So my headcount number was number 38. When I left the school at the end of the term, I got really lonely when I went back to my own school. So I just wrote a letter just explaining about myself, you know, where I'm from, a bit of my background. And the program was really special to me. I made some lifelong friends and made some lifelong experiences and it didn't really occur to me until probably halfway through. So I really wanted to emphasize to the next person to really enjoy it as much as they could. And I just titled it number 38 and I sent the letter and Toria was the number 38 of the next term.
I was a little bit weirded out at first. I was 15 and I got this random letter from somebody I had no idea who they were. Just this young kid introduced himself as Adrian and he'd had number 38. So I asked the teachers around if they remembered him and they said that he was quite a character and he'd built a bit of a name for himself, the term before us.
What kinds of letters did Adrian and Toria exchange while they were pen‑pals?
So I was interested to get to know him more. So I wrote back and yeah, that's when the pen pal stuff begun.
I was so excited. I remember getting home from school and it had been a few weeks by that point and I was really sad. I thought, you know, I wasn't going to get a response. Maybe didn't get there or maybe they just thought it was really weird. And when I got the letter, I was, yeah, I was so excited to, you know, to make a new friend.
What kind of letters did you exchange to each other?
I guess it was just us talking about ourselves and our backgrounds, you know, where we're from, our families.
The activities that we did there, I would be like, oh, we just did, you know, caving. And Adrian would have a story about when he went caving and would write back to me about that. And then there would be a couple of weeks between them arriving and then them getting sent to the other person.
How did the two finally meet in person and what was their first impression?
So we would fill each other in over like the course of a week or two of things happening. So
there
was a lot to talk about.
So she was there for a little over two months. At the end, we kind of decided to stop being pen pals because you couldn't access social media or the internet when you were there. So, you know, once she was able to access social media, we kind of just spoke over that instead. Kind of fizzled out towards the end of the year. And over the next year, when we were both in year 10, we didn't actually talk the entire year.
So at the end of year 10 now, both of our schools were involved in a program that sets year 10 and 11 students up for pathways into university.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What inspired the host to launch the Love Bites mini‑series?
0:02–0:52
2
How did Adrian’s school‑leadership program lead to his first pen‑pal letter?
0:52–1:39
3
Why did Adrian and Toria feel an instant connection after discovering they shared the same number?
1:39–2:44
4
What kinds of letters did Adrian and Toria exchange while they were pen‑pals?
2:44–3:33
5
How did the two finally meet in person and what was their first impression?
3:33–4:30
6
What happened on their first date at Southern Cross Station?
4:30–5:18
7
How did Adrian and Toria’s relationship evolve into a lifelong partnership?
5:18–5:57