m1swanberg's Guestbook

AUNT
HI MICHEAL! I BECAME CONCERNED THIS LAST WEEK WHEN I HEARD ABOUT THE CHILEAN EARTHQUAKES. I GUESS YOU ARE OK, THOUGH. I LOVE SEEING YOUR PICTURES . I ALSO ENVY YOUR TRAVELS. WHAT AN EXPERIENCE!KEEP THE PICTURES AND NOTES COMING. I JUST GOT YOUR BLOG ADDRESS. LOVE,DIANE

Loved the description of "catching the bus"... hilarious! Good pictures too... thanks. Dad

Area Studies
So now that you are a world traveller, do you want to do a presentation for my class? The pictures are great. It sounds like all is well. I will try to Google the house tonight. Have you ditched the long johns yet? There was a heavy frost on the ground this morning. Farmer's Almanac if calling for a mild winter. Thanks for keeping ous posted. Love...Nancy

piscola et al
hey there. great blog. it's hard to tell from what you wrote but i think what you said was that pisco in the US is available but at 3x's the price you'd pay in chile (i think you said this and not that it's not available in the US, b/c it is, it's just hard to find). the pisco i find in the US (pisco capel, alto del carmen, and bauzá) sells for $12, $17, and $11 respectively. there really is no controversy as far as where pisco comes from. peruvians and most chileans who know anything about anything know it comes from peru. chileans didn't really start drinking it until after the war of the pacific (1879-1883), but chileans consume 10x's more pisco than peruvians and export 20x's more of the stuff. the issue comes up b/c peruvians refuse to acknowledge chilean pisco as pisco. in fact they always refer to it by the shorthand "otros licores destilados de uva" ("other liquors distilled from grapes") and they want to make it so only pisco made in peru is actually called pisco (similar to champagne officially only coming from france and no other european country can produce it and call it "champagne"). so when peru and chile make free trade agreements with a country, they have to agree to import only pisco made in that country. chile recently signed a FTA with japan, and you better believe pisco was in the fine print of that agreement. i think it's the dubest thing in the world. only two countries in the entire galaxy produce and consume pisco and there they are, battling each other insted of jointly marketing the stuff abroad. anyway, enjoy your time in chile and pisco. ps, i don't know where you're from, but if nothing else you can order pisco from this huge store in los angeles where i buy mine, check it out: www.beveragewarehouse.com cheers! james st. james

Goals
I really liked this post... thanks! You can see some "sky stuff" (it's an astronomy term... pretty technical) that we can't see here. Like the Southern Cross, The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (they're satellite galaxies of the Milky Way) and lots more too... I hope you get a chance to see them. The "Green Flash" is difficult to catch (from what I understand) but I hope you get to; I've only read about it. Are you planning a trip to the southern tip? That'd be great! Love, Dad

Interesting
Nice to hear from you. Thanks for including us on your blog. I am sure you are experiencing culture shock. Hope you are finding it good and getting used to it. How is the language thing coming? Are you able to communicate with the locals yet? Eric just arrived today for Luke's wedding and to spend a week with us.

Ships
I did see the ships in harbor on Google Earth. I was looking to see how close you were to a beach. I am thinking there is not much swimming going on by those ships. And it is too cold to swim this time of the year anyway (unlike here where it is hitting 90 every day). The town looks "cozy".

Great stuff!
Thanks for the update and the pictures... they're "grrrrreeaaat!". So I'll stop complaining for now but my thirst for pictures is only temporarily satiated.... I NEED MORE! Later, Dad