Camp Walters 2017

Camp Walters 2017

Each year the Walters clan gets together on the waters of Crooked Lake in North East Indiana.  These are my parents, siblings, siblings-n-law, nieces, and nephews.  We were missing Nehemiah (sister's husband) this year b/c of limited vacation time at his new job.  We couldn't have asked for better weather all week!  No rain!  Also, there were no major injuries!  That is almost miracle material with the number of small mischievous humans running amok.  A great time was had by all!

More content from Camp Walters 2017 coming soon...

Zoos

I've been to three zoos since arriving here. The Sriracha, Dusit, and Saint Gabriel's College zoos. The Sriracha zoo was much most entertaining because we posed with apes and tigers and watched crocodile and tiger shows. I visited Sriracha with some seminar leaders from India.
The Dusit zoo started out slow with the most confusing zoo map ever but eventually became entertaining as well with some cool bears, tigers, and the most wrinkled orangutan I've ever seen. We were a little disappointed though. No Giant Pandas. Giandapanda was clearly advertised on the walls outside Dusit zoo, but nowhere to be found within.
Saint Gabriel's College has a small zoo at their academic/recreational center with a few attractions including ostriches, peacocks, and a black swan. To our horror we found out some Thai kids threw rocks at the Ostriches causing them to freak out and trample one of the baby ostriches. Not cool!
I'm looking forward to going to more zoos or even more preferably, wild life refuges. I wonder if Pi from Life of Pi would be upset with me for visiting zoos?

Found this in draft form - might as well post, right?

Meeting Min

I met Min 4 years ago. He commented, via Flickr, on some of the pictures I took in Burma while studying abroad in 2006. Since then, we've chatted online fairly often. Now he's a graduate student at ABAC Hua Mark campus, in BKK. He also runs an online business; flashband.net. Today was the day I went to ABAC to meet Min. Tyler and I hopped on bus 99 and cruised through BKK to get to ABAC. Min picked us up at the bus stop and we went to C Building to meet some of Tyler's friends teaching at ABAC. Then I went to Min's house and met his family. Needless to say, it's great to finally meet Min.

Here I go!

My first post from Thailand! This will be a public journal of sorts. But you only get the PG rated stuff :-P

I'm here. In Bangkok, Thailand. Specifically living on the campus of Saint Gabriel's College, the primary/secondary school in which I teach 6th grade Math in the English language. School hasn't started yet because of the political situation. The government informed schools to not open until Monday, May 24. We'll see if they push it back again.

The red shirt protests have been going on in Bangkok for 2 months. Only today did the protest leaders surrender to police and encourage their followers to go home. They did so after the military cracked down on their main camp in the 'heart' of Bangkok. Arson and looting have ensued. The government called for an 8pm curfew tonight so the streets are now completely empty. No cars, no people, no noise but the insects. Rather eerie for Bangkok. I can't hear a thing from my apartment's roof. Quite peaceful actually. A stark contrast to the gunfights and arson that are happening in the red zone. I can still see the smoke rising from Central World, the second largest mall in Asia. But I can't hear more than the crickets, and occasional bat flying overhead...

Update: The curfew has been extended for the next couple nights. Nothing burning anymore downtown.

That's all that's happening on this first post, but get excited!, there will be plenty more to come.

Here's a video from my apartment's roof;

I Love the Whole World

Boom de yada!

Laugh out Loud

http://www.akenini.com/imagesfun/mini_animations/80.gif

Laughing Babies

The best ever:

http://www.saynotocrack.com/index.php/2008/04/25/the-laughter-of-babies/