Remember our Friday food of the world series? We had lots of great submissions and really enjoyed seeing your food photos from all over the world. But, after one year it’s time for a change.

Together with the PocketCultures team we decided it would be fun to have a photo theme which changes every month. We’ll choose the theme, you bring the photos. Oh, and you can suggest future themes too - just leave us a comment.

September’s theme is seasons. We’ll publish the first post next Friday, so grab a camera and show us what the seasons are doing where you are.

Photo credit

Joining in is easy - tag your photo seasons and add it to our Picture Postcards group on Flickr. If you like, tell us something about it in the description. We’ll pick one every Friday to feature here on PocketCultures.

At PocketCultures we’re very excited about a project that we’ve been working on together: a book about Children’s games around the world.

As well as having fun writing the book, we hope you’ll have fun reading it too. So we’ve put together a short survey to find out more about what you’d like us to include.

We’d love to hear your feedback on the idea - the survey should take 5-10 minutes to complete. Thanks!

Take the survey here.

Read more:
Kiss, hug or shake hands? Greeting people around the world
What is a global citizen? We asked, you answered
World travel bloggers and Lonely Planet

Petya, a Bulgarian living in the USA, just posted about what she loves about Bulgarians:

“What I really like about Bulgarians is our complete disregard for personal space: we are nosy neighbors, tell people how to raise the children, take a lot of group trips, talk to our parents several times a week, show up uninvited, pick fruit off any tree that’s within our reach. When I am in Bulgaria, I feel very connected. I love that.”

We got chatting about it, and decided it would be cool to hear your answers too. We know you’re an international bunch, so tell us:

What do you really like about your country?

And if you’re an expat:

What do you really like about your adoptive country?

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Closer to Taipei than Tokyo, Okinawa is a chain of islands stretching from Taiwan to Kyushu. Once an independent nation, known as the Ryukyu Kingdom, it prospered as a natural sea lane between China, Japan and all of Southeast Asia and the influences of these cultures are evident today. (more…)

If you have eagle eyes, you might have spotted that recently some of our posts have been tagged ‘blogsherpa’. That’s because for the last few months PocketCultures has been part of Lonely Planet’s world travel blogger programme, called BlogSherpa.

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Last month marked the 95^th anniversary of the Anzacs landing at Gallipoli.

Each year on the 25th April Anzac Day is commemorated as a public holiday in Australia and New Zealand. On this day we honor the WWI Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzacs) who landed at Gallipoli, Turkey, on 25th April 1915. It also signifies a time we remember all who have served and died in wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping missions.

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At PocketCultures we’re very pleased to be a partner of the newly launched Local Travel Movement. The interest this initiative has attracted, even before launch, is a good indication that local travel is a growing and global trend, albeit one still in its defining stages.

For now it’s defined around a loose set of values which the movement aims to promote. But the discussion continues, for example with this debate on couchsurfing and local travel.

Vicky Baker, who writes Going local travel, made a thoughtful response to the question of whether couchsurfing is bad for locals. Her conclusion: it depends how you approach it.

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