Zoo Blogs

So this week we were asked to share a blog we enjoy reading. I don’t read blogs. Ever. I never got into that whole livejournal thing, and never really found them interesting. But I never looked. So I started searching for one that I might enjoy. Having just 6 and a half hours of Frelon tech rehearsals, I was drawing blanks about anything I might actually like reading a blog about. So I Googled the first thing that came to mind- “panda blog” and oh the joys I found there. Let me start with a short background of me and pandas. It started when I was 5 and a friend of the family gave me a stuffed panda puppet for my birthday. I really liked this animal, was drawn to pandas I found in stores, and asked for more. It quickly spiraled out of control. I now have way too many pandas. But it became my signature. Every time my family and friends saw pandas, they thought of me. I to this day receive goofy things mailed from around the world, “Saw this and thought of you.” So how could I tell everyone I didn’t want any more pandas? I had a guaranteed way to make sure that my family and friends thinks of me frequently. So I stuck with it. And I do love them, they are great, adorable animals. And I do keep tabs on the pandas in captivity here in the US, as well as the two in the Chiang Mai, Thailand zoo that I visited multiple times on study abroad. Therefore, I thought I should see if they have a blog. Sure enough- there are many panda blogs. They are very strange for the most part. Many are written with zoologists and the zoo keepers. Lots of entries are all about mating, assimilating to new environments, or just something new in their environment, or about what they did that day (keeping in mind that all pandas ever really do is eat and sleep and maybe get about 30 minutes per day of play time in with their roommate). The first link below is my favorite. It keeps tabs on lots of the other panda news cycles and it’s entertaining. The second one is more serious from the San Diego Zoo- but how serious can you be when you write a blog about how one panda climbed a tree in his pen, only to find that below, in another pen, was his brother? (In case you were wondering, the bears then carried on a “conversation” for a few minutes and are expected to climb trees to meet each other again soon.)

All information about pandas blog

San Diego Zoo Panda Blog

As for my remarks on the writing process:

I did not like it. I got so caught up in writing a “paper” that I feel my final product is crap. I’m also not fond of the fact that everyone gets to read it if they wish. Yet, it is a very good growing experience for me. I also couldn’t decide what bit of the story to run with. I wasn’t sure I had more to say about any one of the parts. Marin had suggested that I run with this idea of bed as home. But I couldn’t make it into a very good metaphor. I didn’t end up saying a whole lot on that matter. I’m also not really sure still what all this really means for me. I’m also couldn’t decide how much of a background to give. For instance, do I give more information about the major moves? Do I explain more about why we moved? I know it needs a lot more work and I look forward to hearing what everyone in my group will have to say in workshop tomorrow.