Greetings in French from my penpal Marie in Anet, France. Marie surprised me with a lovely box that included a CD of children’s songs in French (wth a beautiful sing-a-long book!), postcards, a recipe book and more! This card was among the treasures 🙂
Lovely card from France; this is actually one my husband received! But his cards go into my collection so it’s really for me 🙂
I love this card! I read the book, Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik by Marie Javins (www.mariejavins.com) and loved it so much that I started to read Marie’s blog. There she mentioned that she had a postcard for the book. I asked; she sent! Marvelous! Highly recommended reading…get the book!
Received this card from Aislinn for an organized group swap; love the architecture of this church.
I really enjoy this card showing Oulu, which is in North Finland. The sender, Anitta, wrote to tell me how even in Northern Finland they are suffering for a lack of snow! She said she feels for the people in Southern Finland because it is so dark and dreary…and without the snow to brighten things up, people feel really depressed. She is making lifestyle changes in her home to do something about the climate change–conserving energy and all. Maybe if we all work together…if we all do just a little…we can make a difference after all.
This is the very nice card Aislinn sent with her cards; it is a keeper–will have a place in my postcard album as well! The back of the card tells me that it was printed in the Philippines under license from Hallmark, and that it benefits the L.I.F.E. organization: Leukemic Indigents Fund Endowment, a charitable firm dedicated to saving the lives of poor children with leukemia by way of sustained medical treatment. And this makes it all the more special. 🙂
Another card from Aislinn for the organized swap; I love this one because it showcases local handiwork and gives me a flavor or sense of the country 🙂
I was interrupted yesterday in my quest to share with you some of my favorite tools for laptop travelling. But I’m back again today…with more!
1. Bill Bryson is one of my favorite writers. Check out his A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail for a really neat tale of his attempt at hiking the whole length of the more than 2,000-mile long Appalachian trail.
2. Next is Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe, and his African Diary. As with A Walk in the Woods, both of these books are funny and share with you what life is like in faraway places.
3. Lonely Planet the Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World. This awesome book is an almanac like no others! It gives you the basic facts about each country: population, major languages, etc. But it gives you so much more–large, excellent color photos, things to do to experience the culture, and even things about the country that will surprise you. At right around $20, this book is an awesome deal. We keep it out like a “coffee table book,” and so I regularly find my children reading it and looking at the photos.
Will post more blogs and whatnot as I find them.
What would we ever do without the Internet?!? 🙂
Let’s face it. Postcards are nice…penpals are nice. But they just don’t cut it for someone as addicted to the idea of global travel as me (only the idea of global travel because I haven’t travelled anywhere).
So I looked for…and am now addicted to…some heavier stuff.
Check them out!
1. Marie’s World Tour. Want to know what it’s like to travel the world alone, as a single woman? Even if I had twice the gumption, I don’t think I could do half the stuff Marie has done…even if someone was with me! Read through her travel journals for an amazing look at life as an intrepid, budget traveler set upon making it around the world without using airplanes. And when you’re done, buy her book: Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik about her adventurous travels from southern to northern Africa! (I read it in less than 24 hours; was that good!)
2. The Travellin Ts: Travel journal of a family on their trip around the world; I didn’t connect with them as much as I did with Marie, but I still enjoyed reading about their challenges and experiences!
3. Aaron in Africa: Excellent blog with lots of photos of a young man’s time in Africa with the Peace Corps. Love it!
Have more to share….but the kiddies just arrived home so it’s time to take care of some mommy business!
If you know of an excellent travel blog, journal or book, please let me know!
When I picked up my postcard collecting hobby again in July, 2006, I was so very excited to find postcrossing.com! I was even more excited to find the postcrossing forums, where gazillons of private swaps, tags, trades and robins are made on a daily basis! Later, I discovered swap-bot.com, which is more for the artistic among us but still with a decent supply of postcard swaps.
So I swapped.
And I tagged.
And I joined robins.
And I traded.
Then I found organized postcard groups at Yahoo Groups: Postcard Addicts and Friends and Postcard Paradise, to name two. When you join these groups and sign up for them, you’re included in your choice of organized swaps held each month.
Great!
Rec’d from my sister Maria, who traveled to Japan.
So I swapped and I traded some more!
But then, suddenly, it seemed like I was sending out a WHOLE LOT MORE than I was receiving. Plus, I was joining all sorts of postcrossing tags for fridge magnets and keychains and other touristy items, yet receiving either nothing at all or junk.
I have received homemade things that were falling apart…they were of such awful quality that I myself would have been ashamed to send them…and other stuff that is not what I consider to be of swapping quality: angel “ornaments” made from fuzzballs or foam, yellow-stained magnets that had obviously been sitting on the fridge for a decade or so, magnets made from bottlecaps or stuck to the back of photos of people’s cats. Receiving those items seemed even worse than receiving nothing at all.
And yes, I did get lots of nothing!
–No magnet from France
–No magnet from Hungary
–No 10 and 15-card swaps from a few places
–No candy
–No magnet from the UAE
–No tourist items
–No postcards from just about every swapping country I know
–No holiday cards from four different people
It’s horrendous.
I’m appalled.
I’m disgusted.
I’m ready to quit altogether and be one of those funky old stodgers who send ONLY after receiving myself.
Yet here’s the problem.
Note that this is not my image and I do not send these particular things!
I found the image online simply to represent stuff I have to send 🙂
I have TONS of postcards to send. And an entire drawerful of tourist-type items like magnets and keychains and booklets and brochures and stickers and yummies and other goodies just begging to be sent!
If I can send one to you…if you’d like to trade…please leave me a comment here to let me know.
I have not completely given up hope yet, but have quit trading on the postcrossing forums, have stopped using swap-bot completely, and–although I’m sorry to say it–am about to stop signing up for organized group swaps as well.
