About myself

My name is Darwin. I am an American. I was born in California but have lived many places. My hometown in California is in the north. The town of Redding. It is nestled in the foothills of the Cascade mountains between two volcanoes, Mount Shasta and Mount Lassen. It is a beautiful place usually but gets very brown in the summer due to the heat and lack of rain. There is a lot of recreation in the area such as hunting, fishing, hiking, skiing (both water and snow), and boating. Also there are many opportunities for eco-tourism. I love it there but unfortunately there aren't many opportunities for good employment.

Now I am 50 years old and I live in Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand. I learned of this place while coming here for training when I was a soldier. We had an annual training exercise here called Cobra Gold, which was very large and several smaller exercises. I came to live here after I retired from the US Army as a Master Sergeant. The cost of living is very cheap here and the weather is always hot or warm. The food is good and also spicey. The people are normally good and fairly easy to get along with. I love to travel and since it is fairly inexpensive here i have many opportunities. Those are the reasons why I chose to live here in Thailand rather than stay in my native USA.

I was married for 20 years and have three daughters. I am divorced now for 6 years and my daughters are grown. We keep in touch by letters, telephone, e-mails and messenger services. I was born in Redding, Caliornia and lived there for about seven years until my family moved to Silverton, Oregon, a small farming community. I lived on a farm there and worked baling hay, feeding chickens, milking cows and such. I think I aslo developed my good imagination there because I didn't have any brothers and no close neighbors so had to make things up to do. Also my love for adventure and exploriing was born there. Many hours I spent running in the woods and pastures. I also lived in Pasadena, California for a short time but I don't rememeber too much about life there. In Oregon it was very green and rained a lot. I went to a small one room school house that I had to walk to everyday. My most vivid memory of it was sitting in class when we were informed that President Kennedy had been shot.

Back in Redding I grew to my teens having off jobs cutting grass, paper routes and finally washing dishes and short order cook. I graduated high school and tried to go to college but I wasn't ready yet so I just worked. After a time I finally decided to join the Army and see the world. I got to see a lot of Europe and the U.S. too. I had the good fortune to be stationed inWest Berlin November 9, 1989, the beginnig of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I finished my career being stationed in Hawaii. I would say I had a good career and many good experiences. I began in logistics then change to intelligence. I got promoted to Sergeant First Class back to logistics. When I was serving in a tactical intel unit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina I attended and graduated from jump school. I spent six years back in West Berlin without jumping then went to Fort Lewis, Washington to support a Special Forces unit. I spend the rest of my career on jump status and also supporting special operations forces. My final assignment was logistics plans for
Special Operations Command, Pacific.