Welsh Countryside

Getting well immersed in the countryside...

I got this card from my brother when he was on a bike trip in the U.K. He wrote that this was him one night wild camping in a Welsh forest.

The stamp is from a 2011 set of ten and features Daisy from the children's cartoon Thomas the Tank Engine.



This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday, hosted by Beth. Click on the icon to visit her blog and join in.

Watercolor Watermelon

あしたはあしたの風がふくのだ。
Tomorrow, tomorrow's wind will blow.

I got this postcard from my dear friend Lara nearly a year ago. It seems like a good day for watermelon (summer weather!) and a good day to post this card. The artwork is by Miki Yuuseki.

The stamp is the great tit definitive seen here.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday, hosted by Beth. Click the logo to visit and join in.

Dubai, UAE

This weekend is Memorial Day, in which we honor those that died in service to the U.S.A. You may wonder why I've chosen this particular card to represent that theme... read on...



I received this card last August from a friend in the Navy who was stationed in Dubai at the time. The picture shows the Burj Khalifa in downtown Dubai - the tallest building in the world at 2,723 feet. Over 40 wind tunnel tests were conducted before the tower's completion in 2009. It takes 36 workers three to four months to clean all the exterior windows... most of the lower ones have machinery which carries the window-washer around safely; however, at the top, s/he must dangle from a rope to do it. I hope they get paid a lot. The architecture of the tower is supposed to be inspired by a Hymenocallis (spider lily) flower.

Here's the flower. I'm not sure I see the resemblance.

The most special thing about this postcard is the postmark. Although I think he could have sent the card via free mail (U.S. military mail from deployed service members back to the U.S.), instead he sent it from the post office aboard the U.S.S. Emory S Land, a "submarine tender" Navy ship. The ship is equipped to service submarines with everything from food supplies to mechanical repair to mail - hence the on-board post office. I just wish the postmark was less blurry!

Thanks Kirsten for this postcard.





This is a (slightly late) post for Postcard Friendship Friday, hosted by Beth. Click on the image to visit her blog and participate.

Chinese Fish

Paintings of Various Subjects
Album Leaves by Xu Gu
the Qing Dynasty

This is one of the oldest postcards in my collection, and definitely the first card I ever received from China. It predates my joining Postcrossing by a fair margin. This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday, hosted by Beth. Her theme this week is fish/April Fool's Day. I thought about posting a generic spring card (I have a lot of Japanese cherry blossoms, for example), but I thought a fish would be more appropriate. I chose this one because it was sent by a friend rather than a Postcrossing stranger. (Same friend who sent this one.)

After I chose it I noticed that it was postmarked March 31, which is tomorrow (except in 2009). The top two characters on the postmark are the name of the city, Xi'an 西安. The same characters occur in Japanese, where they would be pronounced sei-an, and mean "west peace." The bottom four characters are nearly illegible, but the first two are "Wild Goose Tower" which is a building in Xi'an. I am guessing that together this is the name/location of the post office from which the card was sent. You know, since that is generally what is printed on postmarks.


I love it when people draw artwork on the backs of cards.

Not sure about the stamp. I think it's a definitive. I've gotten it several times. If the characters mean something similar to what they do in Japanese, the theme of the stamp is protecting diverse species.


A post for Postcard Friendship Friday. Click on the icon to go to the page and participate!