Awesome Postcards

I thought I would take a break from rambling on about myself (not that anyone reads this) and show some awesome postcards I have received from Postcrossing, and have an update at the end of the post. If you don't already know what that is, it's a site where you can send postcards back and forth to and from users around the world. It's a very fun hobby, and I've learned a lot about different cultures through it. Postcrossing is very fun, indeed. However, there is only one drawback to this fun, free project--international stamps have really gone through the roof. The price of postcards themselves isn't much better, and it's awfully hard to find good ones, sometimes.

This is one of the very first postcards I received. It's from the Czech Republic, and I received it mid-February. A couple people I showed it to were a wee creeped out--however, I found this postcard to be adorable. These puppets are actually Czech puppets from a famous puppet show called "Spejbl and Hurvinek." Intrigued, I looked up videos on youtube to see the puppet show. Alas, I found none in English or with subtitles.

This is a relatively recent postcard, I received it a couple weeks ago from Belgium. For those of you who don't know about TinTin, it was a comic written by a Belgian artist named Herge from the 1940s to the 1960s. It detailed the adventures of a young reporter/adventurer named TinTin, his dog Snowy, and his friend Captain Haddock, as well as others. This postcard in particular is the comic book cover of the last TinTin comic book Herge ever wrote (the book published posthumously does not count). Having actually read some of the comics myself and being urged to watch the movie (The Adventures of TinTin, 2011), I am truly fascinated by the fandom in general and absolutely loved this postcard.

Not too much to say about this one--it's an Alice in Wonderland postcard from Russia. Not very dark, but a very fun postcard, overall. The writing on the top is the very first paragraph of... You guessed it, Lewis Carroll's famous novel, Alice In Wonderland.

This postcard is actually one I really like a lot--mostly because of the history behind it. I received this just a couple days ago from Belarus, a country bordering Russia. I was boggled for some time because I didn't know who the man on the postcard was. The description on the bottom left of the postcard explaining who it was was unfortunately completely in Russian. Also cool about this postcard--the person who sent it had placed a banana scratch and sniff sticker on the back. Funnily enough, it still smelled like bananas after traveling over half the globe.

Anyhow, I messaged the user asking him who the man was on the postcard. He told me the person was "Vitovt, an ancient king." Well, I looked up the name, and actually found out Vitovt was the Rusyn (a dialect of Belarusian I believe) for the apparently very famous ruler of ancient Lithuania, Vytautas the Great. He ruled Lithuania (Then called The Grand Duchy of Lithuania) and other countries during the late 1300s and early 1400s.Vytautas has apparently become a legendary hero among the people of Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine, and other countries. I was amazed at the amount of knowledge about ancient history I got from just one postcard.

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I have a few updates about life and what you could call personal things. I just got hired at Wal-Mart and will be going to the hiring appointment and interview bright and early tomorrow morning. I'm glad I got a summer job--I can save the money for a car or an apartment when I finally move out of the college dormitories.

Also, I can see again, as I got my frames and lenses yesterday. It's pretty amazing how much of a difference they make. Apparently my eyes are bad enough that people were worried that I was driving without them. Unfortunately, I don't have neither a license nor a car--but I wouldn't drive without glasses anyway, as I could cause a serious accident or get fined if pulled over without them.

I have also been writing different things. If I feel daring enough, I'll post excerpts on this blog in the near future.