Hi Sam from Wyoming, USA

Hi Sam,

Happy belated birthday! 
 
This is a photo we took while we were in Teton National Park in Wyoming – a really beautiful place for hiking and wildlife. We saw moose, deer, bison and eagles – it was great. 
 
We hope to see you at some point in the near future and wish you all the very best.
 
Take care and lots of love, Dan and Ken xxxxxx

Hi Sam from Opera in snowy Norway

Hi Sam,

I joined Opera, the web browser, after leaving RNIB because they do such a good job on accessibility and I wanted to contribute to that. I work with an amazing team where we talk and write about web standards and accessibility in Dev Opera.

Here is my team and the rest of the marketing folks in Northern Norway while at a team meeting. The picture was taken having just eaten hot dogs and drank some very odd tasting hot drink and gone tobogganing.

Perhaps next time we should get toboggans shaped liked tractors!

Henny xoxo

Hi Sam from Bruce, Henny and Shwetank in Norway

Hi Sam,

Well, almost three years to the day that I set off to the Arctic to raise money dog sledding I found myself back in Norway, this time holed up in a cabin in the snowy mountains north of Oslo in Ringbu.

On my right is Bruce Lawson who does a lot of good stuff with accessibility and web standards who I now work with at Opera. When we spotted the tractor it made me think of you and your cool set of wheels.

Happy 2009, hope it’s the best yet.

Henny, Bruce and Shwetank (our photographer extraordinaire)

xxx

Hi Sam from Senegal

Hi Sam,

Rose, Ginny and Vicky say hi sam

Last week I was in St Louis in Senegal. It’s an old town with old French buildings on the Atlantic coast of West Africa. It was gorgeous and hot with long sandy beaches and great jazz clubs for the warm evenings.

This is Rose, Ginny and Vicky sending you best wishes from outside our hotel on the beach!

Lots of love, Stella

Hi Sam from Opera in Xi’an, China

你好 Sam,

Been a while since I sent in a photo but here I am in Xi’an (西安), a Chinese city at the start of the Silk Route, in China. I changed jobs in September and almost immediately went to China to visit lots of universities to talk about web standards with my new company Opera.

Xian is an amazing place and one of the oldest cities in China (ancient in fact) with a large Chinese Muslim community called Uyghurs who make delicious spicy lamb stews and flat breads. Xi’an is probably most famous for the Terracotta Warriors (兵马俑) which were created in the Qing Dynasty in 210 BC and buried with Qin Shi Huang the First Emperor of China. They were forgotten about until they were discovered in 1974 by local farmers drilling for water – probably with tractors

In the photo we’re all taking it easy with a beer after talking to over 200 students and Xian University. From left to right there is Richard Gao, Henrick Lexow Thruth and Zi Bin.

Henny xx

Hi Sam from Germany

Dear Sam,

fiona, sonja, tonia say hi from germany

The picture I have sent you is from Germany, it shows my girlfriend Fiona on the left, my sister Tonia on the right, and me, Sonja, in the middle. My sister lives in the house in the back and we stayed with her and her family. She has 3 boys, they wanted to say hello to you, too, but they were too cold to come out. As you can see it was very windy that evening and it is always a little colder in Germany than it is here in England. 

It was a really special weekend the second November weekend 2008, my fathers 60th Birthday. I went to Germany to celebrate him. He lives with my family in a little town called Huellhorst. I grew up in Huellhorst, but that is not the only interesting fact to know about this little village. Huellhorst is almost 800 years old and has a big history of farming culture. In fact, when I was little we had pigs and ducks in the back garden, sometimes even goose. My grandfather was a real farmer, he had 12 brothers and sisters. They all have families who still live in Huellhorst, so that half of the village is related to us. That makes family parties always rather big. The same happened this time, but fortunately my mother runs a pub restaurant were we could host all guests easily.

Next time when I go to see my family I will make a picture of the wonderful view from my window. 

Best wishes

Sonja

Hi Sam from the Sleeper train

Hi Sam,

Hugh asleep on the sleeper train

we went to Cornwall on holiday but as it is such a long way from London, we went on the overnight train. We left Paddington at 11.45 on the Friday night and got to Cornwall at 8am the next day. It was brilliant to be travelling while we were in bed!

love m and h x

Hi Sam from Dublin

Hi Sam,

Hi Sam made up of the Guinness letters

We went to Dublin a couple of weeks ago but did our usual trick of forgetting to take your poster with us so we used these letters from a big sign on the wall of the Guinness factory instead!

love
Dan & Rach

Hi Sam from Vang Vieng, Laos!

Hi Sam

We know you’re a big fan of tractors, but you’ve probably not heard of tubing. Basically what you do it take a old tractor tyre (or tube), go to a big river, chuck the tube in, hop in and then float down the river, stopping occasionally for refreshments or to jump off slides. Every backpacker in Vang Vieng spends a a few hours floating down the Nam Song river and getting sunburnt.

Daniel, Jane, George, Laura and John tubing in Vang Vieng

We also stopped in to say Hi to Mr. Lao-Lao and his amazingly smiley wife!

Love

Daniel, Jane, George, Laura and John

Hi Sam from Durban

Hi Sam!

Hi Sam from Rach laptop

I spent two months in Durban, South Africa this summer. When it’s summer here in England, it’s winter in South Africa so everyone kept telling us how cold it was but it still felt hot and sunny to us! I’m sorry the Hi Sam picture isn’t great. This was the view from my hotel room balcony, looking out over the Indian ocean. I saw some amazing sunrises from here in the mornings and lots of people surfing in the sea. Some days I sat and watched groups of dolphins and killer whales swimming past too.

This is a picture of the team I was working with, looking out over the city of Durban.

 

View over Durban

The other picture is of a special kind of nest, built by a bird called a Weaver Bird. They make their nests by weaving grass together. We liked this one because it is heart shaped.

 

Rach