Some may disagree, but I would run the risk of chat rooms, i.e. Yahoo's. It's kind of a crap shoot though; you have to wade through a lot of jerks IMing you for sexually-related reasons to find the good ones. But you can. I have many many times. I have friends all over the world from chat.\n\nHi5 is a pretty good social site. Some others you might try are OKcupid.com and myspace.com All 3 of these sites are free.
How do you go about making email friends of another culture?