Unofficial and Amazing - Postcrossing

One awesome and unexpected side effect from being registered for Postcrossing is that occasionally you'll get requests for private swaps. This is when someone sees a card you've sent another person, likes it, and requests a similar card from you off of the Postcrossing records. I got such a request from this girl Kali who is originally from Tennessee but is embarking on a tremendous adventure teaching English in France for the year. Since I've been out of town and broke from my constant need of mini-vacations, her card reached me before I could send her one, but its going out in the mail tomorrow (promise!).

It says:
Hello (Bonsour) Marina! I'm sending you this card because I pass this gorgeous Ducal Palace every single day; literally. I live just around the corner from it! Nevers is such a beautiful place - the food is great, the other English assistants are very fun to be with, and the scenery is gorgeous - What an adventure :)
Happy postcrossing,
Kali

Doesn't that sound wonderful? I'm so jealous. I can't imagine living near anything that remarkable. (Thanks again for the postcard Kali! I'm sending you one tomorrow and I'll find some others for you soon!)


To complete the six cards I received today are three from the same person as a thank you card(s) after receiving one from me! I couldn't believe it! We also talked about using different kinds of stamps so he loaded my cards up with them! I'm gonna leave the pictures small since there are so many but you can click on them to make them bigger.

 

*Thank you card* #1 of 3

Hi Marina! I think most Canadians feel the Kennedy family was like "American Royalty". The photographer is on the 52c stamp (1952). All of the other stamps show Canada's Queen & Head of State, Elizabeth II. Take care, Garnet

 

#2/3

Marina! Lake Louise with Mount Victoria in the background is 200 kms from the city or 2 hours by car. It's a ski resort. The maple leaf flag became the national flag of Canada in Feb 1965 before that date Canada used the "Union Jack" or UK flag! 

Best wishes, Garnet

 

#3/3

Hi Marina! Here is a good view of Alberta's largest city (population 1.5 million). The 54c stamp show Niagara Falls (the treaty is between the USA and Canada - marking the international boundaries of all waterways at the USA/Canada border). The 42c stamp shows how the Alaska highway passes through northern Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon. Best wishes from the Constitutional Monarchy to the north, Garnet. 

Postcrossing 6

The letter says: 

Hello my dear friend!

My name is Natalia. I'm from a beautiful country  - Belarus (Minsk). I'm a student of Belorussian State University and my major subject is economics. I'm interested in dealing with estate property and I would like to connect my future job with it. I'd be glad to make friends with you. I would like to tell you some words on my language. 

[first word I can't read] - It means potato.

[second word I can't read] - It means potato flat cakes with meat. 

[third word I can't read] - it makes native land :)))

There are different holidays in our country. I would like to tell about one in particular. The Midsummer Day or Ivan Kupala's Feast Day is a national pagan summer holiday in honor of the sun. This holiday is celebrated on July 7th. There are a lot of national beliefs and customs connected with this holiday. For example, if you manage to get through the fence of 11 gardens, whatever you wish will come true :)))

Could you please provide me with the information about the average cost of accommodation in your country, plus it would be nice to get some information about things or customs that characterize your country. 

Best wishes, your friend Natalia.

 

 It came with this card too and on the back it says:

Hello dear Marina Hendrix!
This card is from a wonderful country Belarus. This card with our national symbols: 
stork, tractor, and bales of hay.
I hope you like my card.


Best wishes, Natalia.

Isn't that adorable and awesome? I sent her back a thank you card and talked about the Southwest and how it's a mix between American and Mexican culture. Then I talked about barbeque for a good while, haha. 

Postcrossing 5

Today I actually received SIX postcards in the mail!! I'm titling this Postcrossing 5 (not 5,6,7,8,9, and 10) because only two are logged through the Postcrossing website. The others were just acts of kindness from those in the Postcrossing community but I'll get to that in a second.

The officials:

From Robin in South Carolina :)

Texas Renaissance Festival - The Fair

Sunday morning we packed everything up and put it in the car and drove over to the fair grounds a few blocks away. First thing we did when we entered the fair was to find the elephants and ride them. Of course they were on the polar opposite side of the fair but after having put it off last time we were there and then not getting to ride them because of the rain, we were determined to get there and get it done. It was awesomeee. This tiny little six year old boy wanted to ride and couldn't ride by himself so he rode with us on our elephant. Poor kid couldn't decide whether he was excited or terrified and held onto my arms the whole time. The elephant ride was exactly how you'd expect it to be: high up in the air, wobbly, epic, and wonderful. He felt like fuzzy leather but we pet him anyway. haha.

After we knocked out the elephant ride, we just wandered around looking at stuff. Kevin and I tried our hand at a slew of different weaponry. I was really hoping that I would have some unknown natural talent but no such luck. Kevin, on the other hand, is pretty much good at everything. I guess classical weapons are easier to handle if you're a giant man as opposed to a little girl like myself. haha. That's what I'm convincing myself of. 

Long bows. I hit the ceiling twice and the target a total of zero times.

Shelby and Caegan being cute as all get up

Crossbows! Kevin hit the target and got a sticker that says "Crossbow Expert".

He then threw axes and hit the target and got the card you see below.

Can you tell he was excited?

After games, we ate gyros in the Greek section of the fair, watched jousting in the arena, and then split up to play more games and see more shows. Like this crazy Treebeard looking guy.

We stayed in the fair until a little while after dark and after a rainstorm, then watched the fireworks and headed back to the car to make the tired drive back to Austin. We got home, dropped Shelby and Caegan off and wished them fun and good luck on their two and a half month trip to Southeast Asia that they were embarking on a few weeks later! (PS: Send me postcards Shelby!)

Postcrossing 3 and 4

I received my third and fourth postcards from Postcrossing today! I absolutely love this program. It's so exciting to check my mail now! haha.

The first card is from my close neighbor San Antonio, Texas!

The second is from Holland! I also really adore the Hello Kitty sticker ribbon they put at the bottom of the card. So cute :)

Texas Renaissance Festival - Camping

This past weekend, I went to the Texas Renaissance Festival with Kevin and our friends Shelby and Caegan on what turned out to be a double date camping adventure extravaganza. We had originally planned to get a large group of people together and Shelby and I had been trying to coordinate everything for about a month. Everyone was super pumped about it but a few days before we left, the count was down to the four of us. In the end, I'm glad it worked out that way because its easier to run around with just four people as opposed to ten or so.

Friday night was my bandmate, and long time friend, Doug's birthday. He had a huge party and just about everyone we know was there. We all had a ridiculous time. We had originally meant to start driving the two hours to Plantersville for the festival by 10 am the next morning but the party got a little too awesome and we didn't end up leaving Saturday until around 2 pm. haha.

Doug even ripped his pants trying to take a jumping picture drunk. 

By the time we got to the camp grounds, it was almost dark. We decided to just set up camp, chill, and go into the festival the next morning. Kevin and Caegan set up the tent while Shelby and I unpacked and sorted everything and made friends with our neighbors. After everything was set up, we grilled some hot dogs and hung out with our neighbors for a good hour or so. They're in a celtic clan that travels to Renaissance fairs and festivals all over the place and camp out. They were incredibly nice and welcoming. After a while, we decided to venture around the campgrounds to meet and party with other people. First, we went to the big campfire in the middle of the grounds and watched people dance around the fire, including a couple of guys who looked like the Jonas brothers who were literally wearing leather jackets and nothing else. The police came and yelled at them to get dressed and then started yelling at other random people so we left. We then came across a campsite where these people were blaring Limp Bizkit (I just had to google how to spell that, haha) and playing with these crazy balls that had LED lights switching between colors so fast that you couldn't tell until you threw the ball and the space broke up the colors. We played catch with them for a bit and then continued on to another camp. All the while, we're walking around the grounds going from campsite to campsite and talking with people. Kevin tells me how he feels weird just walking into random peoples' campsites and I had to reassure him that that was precisely what you're supposed to do at Ren Fest. The point of camping there is to meet random people and get drunk with them. He then tells me that he doesn't really feel like drinking either.

Then we met Friar Tuck and all that changed. Friar Tuck immediately starts chatting it up with us and starts handing over bottles of liquor for us to sample and subsequently compliment him on. The longer we stand around with him, the more times the bottle passes around our conversation circle and the more inappropriate the jokes tend to turn. At one point, Friar Tuck hands Kevin a bottle of Wild Turkey American Honey and nonchalantly asks him to finish off the remaining 4 or so shots in the bottle. Kevin, who didn't "feel like drinking", gladly accepts. After that, he had little problem warming up to new campsite friends. haha. We had a couple more drinks and a beer with Friar Tuck. Kevin and I wandered into the darkness to find a bathroom and when we came back, Shelby and Caegan were no where to be found. Kevin and I then head back towards our campsite on the other side of the grounds to either find Shelby and Caegan or just hang out in the tent and chill.
We make it back to our camp and our neighbors had a big group of people over including bellydancers and a couple of guys creating a drum circle. We ask if Kevin can play along and they hand him a drum. He caught on really quickly and we sat in the circle for a good hour, passing bottles of homemade wine along and tapping our feet to the rhythm of the drums. At one point, Kevin mentions that I'm a singer and we then all sing Bohemian Rhapsody to drums, accordion, and bellydancing finger symbols. After an exhausting and amazing night, Kevin and I went back to our tent to crash. It was absolutely freezing that night and we came ill prepared with just a couple of sleeping bags, one to sleep on and one to sleep under. After we snuggled up to each other and tucked in every corner of the sleeping bag on top of us, we stayed decently warm but of course we slept in our clothes. The sun rose pretty quickly but the temperature didn't rise as substantially as we had hoped. We then packed up our camp and got ready to go into the fair.

Postcrossing 2

I received my second Postcrossing postcard in the mail today from Taipei, Taiwan! Its super cute!

I get my first paycheck on Friday and I'm going to go down to South Congress and check out a store there that I was told has awesome postcards for sale so I can continue mailing them out. I'm excited to get a good stack going so that when I get a request I can have a couple to choose from depending on who I'm sending it to and what kind of cards they like.

First Postcrossing Card!

Exciting!!!!

I received my first Postcrossing postcard in the mail.

And... where is it from? Only 30 minutes away from my second home Walt Disney World, hahah.

Its a lovely map of Florida and will go perfectly with all the other maps of Florida in my room. Its almost too perfect how well it all goes together.

My first Postcrossing Postcard! From Ocala, Florida. In the background, whats been on my wall since May. haha.

New Hobbies

This past week, I hung out with my friend Shelby who is always in between travels and always up for adventures while she's in town. We match each others' enthusiasm for pretty much everything fun, nerdy, or childlike. Our conversations often escalate quickly into "DUDE! WE HAVE TO DO THAT!", and then we proceed to complete whatever ridiculously awesome plan we've created.

So, one of these exciting things we did was geocaching! I remembered hearing about it like a year or two ago but I had never really looked into it and Shelby had just recently gotten into it and was telling me all about it. The first cache we found was kind of a bust because it was just a log of peoples' names who had found it... which is cool, but we wanted treasures!! So the next time we went out, we went treasure hunting! It took us a bit to find the actual cache but it was filled with tiny treasures so we were satisfied with the find.

 

We also traded a travel bug Shelby had found earlier for one in the cache because her bug wanted to go to South America and the new bug wanted to visit all the U.S. states and Shelby's going to California in a few weeks.

 We walked to another cache site nearby but couldn't find it. We did take some jumping pictures though.

Aside from geocaching, I've recently joined Postcrossing, which is an internet based phenomena that I'm infatuated with already. Basically, you get to send postcards to different people all over the world and once they register that your postcard has arrived, people will get your information randomly generated and you'll receive postcards from all of the world too! So I've sent 6 so far. Two have been received so I have two in the mail on the way to my house from hopefully amazing and far away places! I bought a bunch of stereotypical Texas postcards from the grocery store and the post office but I'm going to hunt for cooler ones soon.

My postcards have been sent to Connecticut, The Netherlands, Canada, Greece, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom. I hope I get some interesting ones back!