Faire son courrier

The further I move away from Guelph, the more mail I seem to send. Makes sense right? When I moved to Kingston I suddenly had to send birthday presents through the mail. Now that I'm out here, I have to send stuff to the people in Guelph AND the people in Kingston. I suppose it will just continue to grow as I continue to move throughout my life. I will never again be as central as I was when I was a kid, and I'll probably spend a fortune on Canada Post.
This is all logical I suppose, but it still surprises me. In addition to my electronic pile of mail to tend to -- emails, ebills, etc. I have a rapidly growing pile of physical mail. It's so big now that I'm going to have to sit down next week and actually put things in envelopes and address them (Christmas presents in April! Finally done and I'm SOO excited about them). I guess it just seems incredibly Victorian. I feel like I should get a little writing desk and use a quill.
When I was in France in 1997, my class at school went through a barrage of eccentric science teachers -- biology, geology, physics, chemistry, etc. A new teacher every couple of months or so to fill our science slot. In physics we actually had three teachers throughout the year. I don't know if they were continuously suffering nervous breakdowns or what, but each was more tightly wound than the last. The first one, a very old man with a beard like Pavlov, for the few weeks we had him (not sure what happened to the crotchety old bugger after that) didn't understand why he had to put up with me, this foreign kid in his class who might possibly require extra tutelage. The solution? Make fun of me at every opportunity.
Of course, by the time we got to physics I was pretty used to everyone laughing at me. I basically functioned in a mascot capacity -- the "American" girl who misunderstands things in a comic fashion, but strangely seems to beat us on test scores.
One day, the teacher began giving a lecture -- and I began studiously to write it all down. At one point he stopped talking, and as I was finishing copying down what he'd just said, it was a moment before I looked up and realized that he had stopped to look at me.
"Tu fais ton courrier?" he asked me (Are you doing your correspondence?)
Thinking that he had asked me if I was doing my course work (Tu fais ton cours?) I said yes, yes I was doing my course.
The class erupted into laughter, and I erupted into blushes. My neighbour explained "courrier" and I understood my mistake (in retrospect though I might as well have been writing letters for all that I learned in that stupid class).
Now though, I'm not sure a lot of people would understand the question were it put to them in their native language. Correspondence? Like taking classes from home?
The future is E, and letters are what you write when the situation is formal. A letter of complaint, a Thank You letter, a letter of apology, a cover letter. Who has pen-pals any more that they don't write to in e-mail?
"Faire son courrier" is even more foreign to me now than it was then.
Envelope glue smells nostalgic.