The Cold & The Snow

Facebook Swap, Sender: Sebastien
Sent: 9 Sep 2013 from Cadillac, France
Received: 18 Sep 2013, Traveled ~11,526 km in 9 days 

The cold spell continues, stepping into the shower in the morning is a scary thing now! It becomes balmy around noon but I wish it's a bit warmer during morning and evenings. Pondering deeper about this weather, I think of the people who have long cold months (and snow). I have a good friend from Oxfordshire, UK who complains of the cold and the gray weather. I can empathize with her more, now! I read in the news several days ago, that the Sun is 'gone to sleep' and we're headed for a mini ice age. I admit reading that terrifies me! My sister joked, "Oh! We're gonna be white walkers!" -- I definitely wouldn't want to be one!

On a brighter note about this cold weather ... I've always thought about fun activities with snow. I've dreamed about drawing snow angels, making and playing with snow men, walking and trekking up hills of snow, like this family high up in the Pyrenees on the postcard. Even if the temperature drops even more though, we still won't get snow here in the Philippines. And so I still imagine sometimes a trip to a country where there's snow even though I'm not a fan of the cold weather. 

The beau and I have talked about skiing in Mont Blanc (pardon me, the postcards I have are from the Pyrenees and not from the Alps). Thinking about freezing in no time and turning into a frozen delight, in addition of a piece of red cherry on top of my head, I refused the idea. But I guess being under this cold spell, I'd be acclimated to chilly temperature and in the not so far future, be able to do fun activities with snow! I keep my fingers crossed!

In regards with the Sun going to sleep, I file it at the back of my head for now. I prefer imagining myself speeding down hill on a sled, with beautiful white and blue scenery around me.

Linking up with Sally for Blue Monday and Paulita for Dreaming of France.

 

Happy Monday everyone!

~maria

Pet Dogs

The first stamp I found at the back of my postcards for Viridian's Sunday Stamps

theme today, 'pets' is a funny one. It's from the second part of a series called

Winter Tales. Designed by Claus Bigum and issued in 2011, the stamps show

Danish winter past times. This particular stamp shows a dog walker.

The second ones are mastiffs, one of the ancient breed of dogs. The two stamps

are issued by the Russian Federation on 15 March 2002. On the left is a bull mastiff,

said to be a cross breed between a mastiff and a bulldog. On the right, is a

Brazilian mastiff, also known as Fila Brasileiro.

~ maria

Spirit of the owl

NL-2196658, Sender: Anne
Sent: 20 Nov 2013 from Breda, Netherlands
Received: 22 Dec 2013, Traveled 10,449 km in 32 days

I'm being more pensive than usual again ... I needed to restrain myself from posting an entry here. I was lost in reverie and I didn't want to publish unguarded thoughts. 'Gotta be careful, right? ;-)

But still, I don't want to lose another chance to share a pretty postcard for
Clytie's Guest Heart Thursday and Beth's Postcard Friendship Friday.

To steer my thoughts to the right direction and to guide me make sensible reflections, here's one  of my favorite postcards. May my thoughts reflect wisdom, like the spirit of the owl. May my perception reflect clarity like being  able to identify that one obvious heart in the card. And may my judgment encompass benevolence,  like the clearly obvious and concealed layers of hearts on this card. 
How many can you count? I admit it's hard counting all of them! 

Happy weekend everyone!

~maria

Winter in Japan

JP-339971, Sender: Saya
Sent: 23 Nov 2012 from Obihiro, Japan
Received: 12 Dec 2012, Traveled 3,790 km in 19 days

Still with the cold weather as inspiration, I'm sharing today a postcard from the Kikuchi Haruo 's photo collection. I asked my friend who's studying in Japan to translate the characters for me. He said it's an image of a blue river in the town of Biei in Hokkaido, Japan. Blue river is the translation for the characters on top, Hokkaido Biei for characters on lower left, and Kikuchi Haruo on lower right.

Saya wrote: Hello/Konnichiwa. Greetings from north of Japan... It is very cold today. This is winter scenery of my region. It's beautiful.

I can imagine that blue water is indeed icy cold! Good thing though not everything is frozen and there is still flowing liquid on this stream.

Sharing this for Our World Tuesday.

~maria

Landscape from Mongolia, Altai, and Tuva

RU-884382, Sender: Irina
Sent: 30 March 2012 from Tomsk, Russia
Received: 17 June 2012, Traveled 5,575 km in 79 days

Yesterday, the lowest temperature of the decade was recorded here in Manila at 19 degree Celsius. The weather forecast said that the cold spell will last until around first week of February. With this weather, I'll be posting frosty-inspired postcards for this month of the year.

This postcard showing a landscape from Mongolia, Altai, and Tuva is in the list of my cards which took the longest time to travel. It is from Irina, a travel agent in Russia, living near Tomsk. She said:

Tomsk is beautiful and really interesting city. It was found in 1604 and called "The Siberian Athens" because of many universities here. Altai is situated not so far from Tomsk (and Seversk, of course). I visited Altai last month. And I think it's really an interesting place with great nature.

I agree with Irina, this landscape from Altai with the Karakol Lake in the foreground is really majestic! This is also a beautiful postcard. The uploaded image here in blogger doesn't give enough justice to the card but when viewed with MS Picture Manager, it looks like it is a 3D image with that reflection of the mountains in the water.

For more blue images, visit Blue Monday @ Smiling Sally.

~ maria