Awesome Hostel Game: Letter Roulette

While it can be played by any group of literate people, it’s apt for the crowd of travelers in a hostel, united by the happenstance of their geography.

It was while I was staying hostel in Kampala, Uganda that the travel muses whispered this game. I had my man purse with me, filled with thingamabobs, whatzits and envelopes. I passed out an envelope to everyone and announced, “we are going to play a game.”

Managing the game by chaos, I only explained one step at a time. In hindsight, this is the best way to explain the game as it creates drama, tension, interest–but truth be told, I was just making it up as I went along. The game that emerged though I will play again.

For your recreation it is posted. Please play it. Enjoy it. Share it. It is too much fun not to.

Letter Roulette: The Best Hostel Game Ever?

Step 1: Pass out an envelope to everyone participating and tell them to write a postal address they have memorized.

Step 2:Collect the letters. Hide them. Put them in your underpants if you must.

Step 3: Gross! Take those letters out of your underpants. That was a joke. Jeez Louize.

Step 4: Hand everyone a piece of paper, tell them they can write whatever they want on it. Likely, this will be too much for half of them to handle and you’ll have to repeat it several times. “What do I write on it?” They will ask. “Anything!” Insist. A poem. Something wonderful. A picture. A joke. Something dirty. A manefesto. They world is everyone’s paper playground and it is recess time.

Step 5: Pass out at random the envelopes, making sure no one gets their own, tell them to put whatever the wrote on the paper inside and seal it.

That’s it. Now it’s up to every individual to send whatever they wrote to a complete stranger halfway across the world, it is not completely up to them.

Hooray!