Looks like the holiday season is in full throttle now, with everyone focusing on shopping, planning, and organizing their Christmas holidays. Sometimes with all the holiday hype, it’s hard to remember that a large percentage of the world can barely put food on their table, let alone buy extravagent presents and travel long distances to gather with family and friends.

This year, some Seattle based travelbloggers – Pam Mandel from Nerd’s Eye View, Beth Whitman of Wanderlust and Lipstick, Debbie Dubrow from Delicious Baby, and Michelle Duffy of WanderMom - (all of whom I include amongst my cyber-friends) have created Passports with Purpose, a travelblogging fundraiser for the Heifer Foundation. It’s a great way of giving something to those who have very little.

The Heifer Foundation, for those who don’t know, is a nonprofit organization that seeks to eliminate hunger and poverty around the globe.

Here’s how Passports with Purpose will work…

• - Various travelbloggers from around cyberspace (and the world) have spent the last couple of weeks gathering great prizes to raffle off.
• - Starting tomorrow (1st December) each of these travelbloggers will post about Passports with Purpose on their blog, along with the prize that they have procured.
• - Readers are invited to purchase raffle tickets (at $10 each) throughout the month of December at the FirstGiving.com account set up for Passports with Purpose.
• - An established raffle committee will pick the all prize winners on 30th December 2008.
• - The proceeds of the raffle sales (minus minimal transaction fees to FirstGiving.com) will go directly to the Heifer Foundation.

Stop back tomorrow to see the full list of participating travel blogs and the prizes on offer, as well as exactly where to go to purchase a ticket or two…

(This is cross-posted on my Write to Travel blog)

Way back in the 1980′s when Susan Jeffers’ wrote her self help book ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’, I’m sure she wasn’t thinking about New Zealand and it’s newly found status as an extreme adventure destination. But anyone who has visited New Zealand knows, ‘feeling the fear and doing it anyway’ really is part of the New Zealand experience.

From top to bottom, wherever you go in New Zealand, there are extreme adventures waiting for you. Here’s just a sampling…

All most people see when they arrive in Auckland is yet another big city. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find that there’s plenty of adventure to be had. From climbing the Auckland Bridge to bungy jumping off the Sky Tower, there’s enough here to impress both novice to experienced adrenalin junkies. And for those not to keen on leaving the ground, there is always the Minus 5 Bar, where for half an hour, you can get all rugged up and pretend you’re living in the ice age.

Heading down the North Island, there’s zorbing in Rotorua, caving in Waitomo, and Dam Drop in New Plymouth.

Of course, you could just skip all this and just head south to Queenstown, a hyperactive, adrenalin fueled town that’s tailor made for adventures and adrenalin junkies. Queenstown has it all – rivers to raft, canyons to explore, lakes to parasail, mountains to ski, and of course, plenty of places to bungy jump. It was here, in 1988, that AJ Hackett, introduced bungy jumping to the world.

Want to know more? Then check out AdventurePro Australia and New Zealand and New Zealand A to Z for comprehensive information on New Zealand’s adventure activities.

And don’t forget, there’s still time to enter the Organic Explorer New Zealand book giveaway. Just click here and leave a comment before 1 December 2008. Cause even when you want to go extreme, you can stay green.

Tomorrow’s American Thanksgiving holiday will see millions of turkeys roasted, billions of pounds of cranberries boiled with sugar, and a cornucopia of root vegetables baked, broiled, stewed, creamed, and mashed.

The culinary excesses of the holiday are meant to serve as a reminder of Thanksgiving’s original harvest celebration in 1621. Tradition has it that the pilgrims at the Plimoth colony in Massachusetts were facing a lean winter and had very little harvest to celebrate. As they sat down to their scant meal, the Wampanoag tribe came by bringing quantities of food and offering friendship.

There’s a lot of myth behind this legend, but the appreciation is still there. A fantastic family holiday outing would be to visit the Thanksgiving: Memory, Myth, and Meaning exhibit at the museum Plimouth Plantation outside of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

When I visited Plymouth with my English in-laws two years ago, we were fascinated with the simplicity of the pilgrims’ lives. Thanksgiving just happens to be my favorite holiday. Even though the pilgrims weren’t my favorite adventurers in history, their determination to overcome hardships and challenges in a new country is something to be admired from a few hundred years away.

Most people might not expect an artistic experience in a gritty urban subway station (other than perhaps encountering a really talented street musician playing in the great acoustics) but thanks to active promotion of public art by the New York MTA, there are plenty of colorful underground delights to see.

One of them is this giant fish mosaic at the Delancey Street station (F line) and even though I was surprised by its size and intricacy, I was not surprised to find a mosaic there.

One of my blogging friends, GrrlScientist, has been photographing and documenting this artwork for a long time.  She periodically sends submissions to my Carnival of Cities blog carnival – her posts depict the huge variety of mosaic tile subway art in the MTA system. Thanks to her, I knew to look for it when I was in New York doing some work for the Condé Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards.

A little digging taught me that the photo above is more formally known as “Shad Crossing” by artist Ming Fay; it was completed in 2004. It represents the local shad fish that swim upriver in springtime, and also the immigrants who come across oceans to live in this part of Manhattan’s Lower East Side and make a new life in America.

Another Ming Fay mosaic in the station beautifully depicts a lush cherry orchard; today’s Orchard Street, near Delancey, used to be an orchard on the Delancey family farm.

Do you have any favorite subway art or architecture in your city?

Related posts:

• Good eats on New York’s Lower East Side
• The American story is alive at the Tenement Museum
• What is it about New York, anyway? The answers beg the question
• A New York City sanctuary: the Public Library

Sticking with the green theme this weekend, Perceptive Travel has a copy of the latest edition of Organic Explorer New Zealand to giveaway.

This book really is the ultimate guidebook for anyone who wants to travel green in New Zealand.

Full of information about eco-friendly places to eat, stay and explore, Organic Explorer New Zealand has opened up a whole new world of places for me to visit next time I’m traveling around New Zealand. It’s even highlighted a few places I never knew about in my own backyard.

Written by Leonie Johnsen, who used to be with NZ Organic magazine, this beautifully put together guidebook travels from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island, detailing over 550 places to eat, sleep, and play the organic way. Listings range from organic breweries and lavender farms to sacred Maori sites and unique accomodations.

But what’s even better is that Leonie has also created a website that provides all the information in the book and more.

Offering a searchable database which lets you quickly pinpoint where to go for what, the Organic Explorer website answers all your questions about traveling green in New Zealand.

For a chance to win this latest edition of Organic Explorer New Zealand just leave a comment below (by 1st December 2008) as to why you want this book. The winner will be chosen by random selection and be announced on 2nd December.