Hello lovely ladies,
Are you all ready for the T-Party, hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard?
Come and join us with a post that has a drink or a drink reference in it. I have something to contribute, but this blog is about postcards so without further ado, here are my postcards.
The theme this time is Belarus.
Belarus,[a] officially the Republic of Belarus,[b] and historically Byelorussia, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Covering an area of 207,600 square kilometres (80,200 sq mi) and with a population of 9.3 million, Belarus is the thirteenth-largest and the twentieth-most populous country in Europe. The country is administratively divided into seven regions. Minsk is the capital and largest city.
Much of the borders of Belarus took their modern shape in 1939, when some lands of the Second Polish Republic were reintegrated into it after the Soviet invasion of Poland, and were finalized after World War II.[11][12][13] During World War II, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about a quarter of its population and half of its economic resources.[14] The republic was redeveloped in the post-war years. In 1945, the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union.
The parliament of the republic proclaimed the sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990, and during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus declared independence on 25 August 1991.[15] Following the adoption of a new constitution in 1994, Alexander Lukashenko was elected Belarus's first president in the country's first and only free election post-independence, serving as president ever since.[16] Lukashenko's government is authoritarian with a poor human rights record due to widespread human rights abuses.[17][18][19][20] Belarus is the only country in Europe officially using the death penalty. Lukashenko has continued a number of Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of large sections of the economy. In 2000, Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, forming the Union State.
Belarus is a developing country, ranking 53rd in the Human Development Index.
Here is the card I received:
It is entitled Bielaviezhskaya Puscha. That is a National Park which has UNESCO World Heritage status.
It straddles the border between Poland and Belarus. (On the card the part on the right is Belarus and the left is Poland).
Białowieża Forest is one of the last and largest remaining parts of the immense primeval forest that once stretched across the European Plain. The forest is home to 800 European bison, Europe's heaviest land animal.[2] UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme designated the Polish Biosphere Reserve Białowieża in 1976[3] and the Belarusian Biosphere Reserve Belovezhskaya Puschcha in 1993.
On the Belarusian side, the forest is protected as the Belavezhskaya Pushcha National Park with an area of 1,771 km2 (684 sq mi). The core, strictly protected, area covers 38%, the zone of regulated use 26,1%, and the touristic zone and economic zone combined 36%; the National Park and World Heritage Site comprises 876 km2 (338 sq mi).The Belovezhskaya pushcha headquarters at Kamieniuki include laboratory facilities and a zoo where European bison (reintroduced into the park in 1929), konik (a semi-wild horse), wild boar, Eurasian elk and other indigenous animals may be viewed in enclosures of their natural habitat. A new attraction there is a New Year's museum with Ded Moroz (the East Slavic counterpart of Father Christmas).
The stamp is interesting:
I think it celebrates 60 years UNESCO World Heritage sites. The bison are obviously the National park mentioned above.
The second card is also from Belarus:
It is a photo of Lilya Bric.
Lilya Yuryevna Brik; née Kagan; November 11 1891 – August 4, 1978) was a Russian author and socialite, connected to many leading figures in the Russian avant-garde between 1914 and 1930. She was known as the beloved (muse) of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Lilya Brik was married for a long time to the poet, editor and literary critic Osip Brik (1888–1945), and she was the older sister of the French-Russian writer Elsa Triolet (1896–1970). Pablo Neruda called Lilya "muse of Russian avant-garde". Her name was frequently abbreviated by her contemporaries as "Л.Ю." or "Л.Ю.Б." which are the first letters of the Russian word "любовь" lyubov, "love". 
The daughter of a prosperous Jewish jurist, the handsome, erotically obsessed, highly cultivated Lili grew up with an overwhelming ambition prevalent among women of the Russian intelligentsia: to be perpetuated in human memory by being the muse of a famous poet. ... The two made a pact to love each other "in the Chernyshevsky manner" – a reference to one of nineteenth-century Russia's most famous radical thinkers, who was an early advocate of "open marriages." Living at the heart of an artistic bohemia and receiving the intelligentsia in the salon of his delectable wife, Osip Brik, true to his promise, calmly accepted his wife's infidelities from the start. In fact, upon hearing his wife confess that she had gone to bed with the famous young poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, Brik exclaimed "How could you refuse anything to that man?" ... In 1918, when Mayakovsky and the Briks became inseparable, he simply moved in with them. Throughout the rest of his life, he made his home at a succession of flats that the Briks occupied.
The stamp is celebrating Postcrossing! That is fun!
I had a surprise the other day when I went to collect my mail from the post office:
It was a card all the way from the USA. Kathy (in Ozark) sent it to me. Thank you so much Kathy. What a lovely surprise!
It's a beautifully executed stamp featuring 'Trick or treat' characters. What a cute stamp! Kathy asks if we do trick or treat here. No, we don't. Halloween is a typically American celebration. The children here have seen things about Halloween in the media and the big stores are cashing in on anything orange and pumpkinny. But I have never seen children trick or treating. As we certainly don't send Halloween related cards, so this one is very special Kathy. Thank you very much.
Here is my qualifier for the T-Party: I made meatballs in tomato sauce and we had spaghetti with that.
The drink you see is hubby's non alcoholic beer Mahou 0%.
We have a large chess set in our village. The chess pieces are knee high. It's nice to now, the set is still complete.
We have started to go back to doing Intercambio again. This is where English speakers and Spanish speakers get together to practice speaking with each other. We now have a small class room, in a tiny building right in the middle of the park.
On Sunday we (our little house group church) were invited to the Romanian church, a group of Romanian Christians that meet in a hall in Baza.
After the service (which was in Spanish and in Romanian) they had ordered pizza for everyone!
The women were very sweet and welcoming and at the end I wanted to have my photo taken with the women. It was a very special time.
Our Danish neighbors are back. We went out to see them a few times and this photo is taken at night (Yes, we still sit out at night) from their terrace. Our house is visible on the right. The white four story building built on the slope.
Baza (our nearest town) is visible on the horizon.
That is it from me today.
Take care everyone!
Happy T-Day,
Hugs,
Lisca
