Advertisement
Published: August 8th 2007
Famous House
I'm standing outside of a pretty famous house in Valpo. I'm not really sure what exactly it is, but chances are if you google search Valparaiso this image will be there somewhere.Hello All,
Well I haven't written anything up here for a long time, so I think it's time. Where to begin where to begin?
Life is crazy here, that's a good place to start. My classes started last week, and in my first 8 classes, the professor failed to show up! No warning, just no prof. This is kinda what life is like here. Things just either happen or don't happen but there's no time to think about it because as something is failing to happen, something else is beginning. What in the world does that mean? Good question. Maybe its just because I still really have no idea what's going on, but I feel like everything that happens here is a surprise!
Ha, for example, after a particularly late Saturday night this weekend (not that that's out of the ordinary, going out usually happens at about 10:30 or 11:00 pm), I woke up and walked into the kitchen where Emma was making lunch and starting to set the table. I started helping her with the dishes and noticed she grabbed 11 spoons, which seemed weird to me because there's only 4 people that live in the house.
Cats!
This is in a stairwell right by my house where there's always a ton of stray cats hangin'. I asked her why she had so many and she explained that her family was coming over to eat lunch.
"Great!", I said, when are they getting here?"
"Oh about five minutes!"
.......
"Ok, I think I'm gonna go take a shower."
We spent the rest of the day hanging out with family, eating good food, looking at slides, ect. until like 10:30 and had a great time!
On Saturday, I took a boat tour that I had heard about in one of my guide books out in the harbor. For 6 people to take a 30 minute boat ride, we paid the equivalent of $20 US! And the boat ride ended up being over 45 minutes long. It was a great time. Since Valparaiso is home to the biggest port in South America, there are huuuuuuuge freighters in the harbor at all times, all of which dwarfed our little 10 person tour boat. But there is some impressive stuff out there. We also went by the Navy's port, who's battleships where even more impressive. Definitely one of those times when I really wish I had a camera! I'll be getting one very soon though.
Stairway to...?
This is a REALLY steep long stairway going down...quite typical here. I'm gonna have strong legs when I get back. I have now ridden in my fair share of ascensores, which are some of the trademarks of Valparaiso. They are elevators built over 100 years ago into tracks on the hills to make climbing up to the neighborhoods easier, and some are very impressive, either very long or very steep. Even still though, I don't think the design has changed much since they were put in, and some of the cars feel like I could probably have built them better. But so far I'm 5 for 5, so I'm liking my odds.
Well, I'm not really sure what else to write about right now, but I went on a walk with my brother Pancho the other day (Pancho is the typical nickname for Francisco), and he took lots of pictures, so I'm going to put some of them up plus one other one that I stole from somebody through the magic of Facebook. Please keep in mind that they were copied from a website so they aren't the best quality, but at least its something so stop complaining!
So long for now!
Michael
P.S. If you click subscribe, you will get an email every time I add something
Valpo!
Me and Valparaiso! here, so, ya know, maybe do that.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.065s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 16; qc: 35; dbt: 0.0263s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Gary Swanberg
non-member comment
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