And now I’m caught back up with PotD.

Today’s card was received this month as part of the July Alternative Round Robin #1 on the Postcrossing Forums. This card came from participant #19, Pro, from China. The caption on it reads “Wulingyuan Scenery – Warrior Training a Horse.” Pro also mentioned on the card that this is a UNESCO site in his country.

It’s absolutely breathtaking – although I imagine if there is a lookout point from where this photo was taken, I’d never manage to get close to it with my horrible fear of heights!  My husband commented that it looks like something out of the movie Avatar.  I think he’s pretty close!

From Wikipedia on the area:

Since my last post didn’t post on time, there will be two postcards today.  :)  I have this post scheduled for an overnight (gotta love WordPress).  The other will post sometime in the evening.

This is a postcard of Union Square in San Francisco. I received this card via a non-Postcrossing private swap back in 2002, presumably from a friendship book based on the text on it.

San Francisco is a special place to me. When I was 12 years old, my mom took me to SF for a “girls week out” shortly after she and my father separated. Just the two of us. It was the first time I met some of her friends who have become dear to me over the years as surrogate aunts. It was really the first time I saw my mom not just as my mom, but as as a friend that I could really enjoy spending time with. I saw the house I lived in for the first six months of my life. I saw where my parents lived when my dad was doing his residency. I played chicken with other riders on the trolleys going up and down those hills, high-fiving the people standing on the running boards on the inside of the cars. They roll close enough to each other that you could touch other people going the other way… while also holding on tight to the pole so you didn’t fall off.

And I got to fall in love with San Francisco. And yes, I left a huge piece of my heart there. I absolutely adore it, and I miss not going there.

A year after that trip with my Mom, she moved there. For the next eight years, the San Francisco Bay Area was a second home to me. And I was close to going out that way for college.

Sometimes postcards bring back a lot of good memories. This happens to be one of those cards.

Note:  For some reason this didn’t post yesterday… so I’m attempting again.  :)

Today’s card is one of my favorites that I’ve received from Postcrossing since the very beginning. This is Postcrossing card #AU-3350 (Australia) received from Postcrossing user Angie back in June 2006.  I apologize for the slight blurry photo… I’m going to be trying to fix this over the weekend with my photos to date.

The title of the painting is “Autumn (Fish- Mussels – Pippies)” by Yirra-Kurl (aka Deborah Newenbam-Coertse), an Aboriginal artist.  I have a didgeridoo with the same dotted Aboriginal style art (my didg has turtles on it) in similar colors.

It’s one of the more colorful postcards in my collection.

Today’s card is one I received just a couple weeks ago. It’s Postcrossing card #US-749167 (USA) from Postcrossing user “Bixie.”

The card’s caption reads: “Cherry Blossoms – Washington, D.C. #49814 East and West unite at the Tidal Basin. A stone pagoda, presented to the city of Washington by the Mayor of Yokohama, stands near the Jefferson Memorial. A symbol of friendship between the United States and Japan, it looks toward the Washington Monument, separated, like the two nations, by a body of water. Photographer: Carol Deihl.”

Every year I see the ads at South Station to take Amtrak to Washington, D.C. in April for the Cherry Blossom festivals.  They have overnight and weekends trips to go see the trees.  The problem is that it just winds up being a bad time of the year financially for me, and I never go.  One of these years, though, I will.  It’s on that “to do before I die” list.  Unfortunately I need to get a move on because the original trees are few and far between now – they’ll be 100 years old in a couple of years.  Definitely a “do this before they’re gone” thing.

Today’s postcard is one of the older Postcrossing cards in my collection. It’s card #FI-13616 (Finland). I received it in March 2006 from Postcrossing user “Ainu” on my now-defunct “measi” postcrossing account.

The card features one of the Moomin characters, which are extremely popular for collectors on Postcrossing. I believe this is the only one I have in my collection. Ainu explained it to me on the postcard:

16 March 2006, Espoo

Hi! I’m afraid there isn’t a pic of Espoo on this card, but instead there’s a Moomin character. I love the Moomin stories so I also like sending cards with the characters’ pictures. in the big pic on the other side you can see the mother of “Muumipeikko” (I don’t know his name in English).

So looking up Moomins on Wikipedia, they appear to be one of those cartoon character families that reminds me a little bit of Babar, if not perhaps a little bit more wide spread in its media range:

The Moomins (Swedish: Mumintroll) are the central characters in a series of books and a comic strip by Swedish-Finn illustrator and writer Tove Jansson, originally published in Swedish by Schildts in Finland. They are a family of trolls who are white and roundish, with large snouts that make them resemble hippopotamuses. The carefree and adventurous family live in their house in Moominvalley, in the forests of Finland, though in the past their temporary residences have included a lighthouse and a theatre. They have many adventures along with their various friends.
In all, nine books were released in the series, with five picture books and a comic strip also written by Jansson being released between 1945 and 1993.

The Moomins have since been the basis for numerous television series, films and even a theme park called Moomin World in Naantali, Finland.

They look a bit like hippos to me, personally. They are cute, though!

I received this card earlier this month (July 2010) as part of a 26-person round robin from Postcrossing user SilentNight89 in Finland.  For this round robin, we sent a postcard to each of the other people in the robin – so I sent out 25 cards, and am in the process of receiving 25 in return.  At the time of writing this entry, I’ve received 21.

There’s no by-line on the back. The front reads “Päivät putoavat kuin vaahteran lehdet” which I’m translating via online methods to “Days fall like the leaves of the maple.” I love the autumn colors on the card – it reminds me of the colors we’ll see here in just a few months.

Off and on for the past four years, I’ve been a member of Postcrossing. I started back at the time when you had to stay active, or your ID was deleted from the login database (although the name remained for the ease of postcard tracking). When I rejoined back in December, my original screenname couldn’t be accessed. So I’ve joined under a new one. And just as before, I’ve received some lovely cards from all over the world.

Since I do have so many wonderful cards, I’ve decided that I’m going to start a new little “feature” on my blog called Postcrossing of the Day. It will keep my blog a bit more active – and colorful – and will allow me to show off both the new and the older postcards that I have. A lot of people talk about seeing “low number” postcards from the site. I have a decent number of those. ☺

For those unfamiliar with postcrossing, the site works like this – when you’re ready to send a card, the database on the website pulls a random name from someone who’s in a queue of recently eligible people (i.e. people whose cards to others have been received).  The database automatically generates a number, starting with a two letter prefix indicating the nation (for example, the USA is US.  Finland is FI, and Germany is DE), and then the next sequential number from that nation’s cards.  When someone receives a card, (s)he enters the generated number onto the website, which acknowledges the card as received and puts the sender of the card into the queue to receive a new card.

Fun, easy – and a wonderful way to get surprise cards from all over the world!

Since I have many, many cards – and unfortunately some of them are from my earlier days on postcrossing where accounts were deleted if they went inactive for a while, I am unable to upload many of these cards to the Postcrossing site directly.  Instead, I’m going to feature them here.  Think of this as a variation on the 365 photos project.  I’ll be doing 365 postcards.  :)

The first card I’m featuring is my lowest numbered card, QA-3 (Qatar).  I received it in December 2005 from Postcrossing user Rayza.  The caption on the back reads “Two camels and riders pasisng Barzan tower (before renovation in 2005).”  It’s a slightly elongated card -about the size of a #10 envelope here in the US.  Isn’t it gorgeous?  It’s still one of my favorites!
Stay tuned for most cards in upcoming days…