Deciduosity

Deciduous trees drop their leaves in the Fall and regrow them in the Spring. I suspected that there were a few deciduous trees here in Sevilla, but this morning, as I walked along the overgrown side of the river, I saw a group of trees that were clearly dropping their leaves:

It will be interesting to see when the leaves regrow.

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Sevilla started putting up the municipal Christmas lights. These are over the square at the end of our main street. There are strands of lights in trees along the streets and in several of the bigger squares around town. None were lit as we walked around this evening. For the moment, I think it's just a process of installation. The lighting probably won't be for a couple more weeks:

This evening the door to the parish inside the cathedral was open. The cathedral is a huge tourist attraction, but it has a functioning Catholic congregation within as well. The "church" is actually separated from the rest of the cathedral, but still inside. It's essentially a church within a church. Regardless, though I have visited the cathedral, I've never visited the parish church. It's impressive and just as ornate as the cathedral it is housed in:

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There was a nice sliver of moon this evening above Triana as we returned from an evening walk:

Also, there's a bit of a chill in the air in the evenings. All of the street cafes have outdoor heaters of various types. These open columns of flame are common. They look interesting in slow motion:

Mexico Lurks

Low-key day today. On the way home from the usual big Saturday grocery shopping trip (everything's closed on Sunday), we ran across this random Mariachi band playing on our main street:

I have no idea what the "event" was. This is not a Spanish tradition. It's a Mexican tradition. We probably should've take that as an omen.

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Spicy food is not part of Spanish cuisine. The hot pepper, so common to Mexican cuisine, is actively avoided by Spaniards. Laura and I are huge fans of Mexican food. We always on the lookout for good Mexican food here in Sevilla. We've found some OK places, but none compare to the ordinary Mexican places we have in Walla Walla. Laura has also worked hard to make Mexican dishes at home. She even knows how to make pretty good refried beans (which you can't buy here) and homemade salsa. The missing ingredient is always the hot pepper.

Today Laura decided to browse the Triana Market for hot peppers of any variety. We saw some promising small green peppers at two stands, but both were just baby sweet peppers. After wandering through nearly all of the stalls in the market, we came around a corner and spotted a small stash of fresh jalapeno peppers! They were expensive, but we snagged a handful and a couple of serrano peppers too:

They were relatively expensive--5 euros, but the salsa Laura made this afternoon using these peppers was perfect. These were definitely the missing Mexican ingredient. We went all in and had some nachos with heavy toppings for dinner:

The Mexican itch is now scratched. Not only that, but we now have a nearby, reliable supply of hot peppers for future Mexican dishes.

Alpenista

The workers painting the interior spaces of our building have moved into the small courtyard. We have three windows the open onto this small courtyard, but no access to it. It's too small for scaffolding, so they work hanging from ropes tied to the roof. Perhaps it's normal, or a translation issue, or someone's sense of humor, but the leaflets we get under our doors letting us know of the work schedule and telling us to keep our windows closed while they work, referred to the workers as "alpenistas" (mountain climbers). Laura and I kind of laughed about it when we read the note. However, this morning when I saw them working, I couldn't think of a better term:

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Laundry was piling up and I couldn't wait for roof access, so I did another load and set it out on the indoor drying rack. It was a large load and there was literally no room to spare on the rack:

With the fan, the heater and the sunlight, 90% of it dried by the time I went to bed.

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The weekly cultural activity led by Laura's Spanish teacher, Lucia, had us at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo(CAAC) to see an exhibit of the work of Spanish artist Alfonso Albacete.  The CAAC is in an old monastary that made ceramics. There are old chapels, school buildings and kilns interspersed across the site:

The courtyard with the ivy leaves turning red in the late fall was serene:

This was our second visit to the CAAC. We went in August, but all the exhibits had since changed. Plus, it was about 40 degrees cooler.

Here are a few of the pieces I liked. This is an interpretation of the approach to the Mediterranean coast in the south of Spain. I liked it because I recognized it almost immediately as the landscape we saw when we took a bus to Malaga in August, in spite of the fact that it is heavily abstracted:

I liked this juxtaposition of an injured soccer player being taken off the field and the lowering of Christ's body from the cross:

I just liked how expressive these simple rectangular windows were:

Finally, there's a lot of self-reference going on here. It's a painting of a painting on an easel. In the easel painting, we see an abstract painting of the room in the painting. We also see to the right, a painting of the artist in the painting:

On the way out, I took a slow motion video of one of the fountains on the grounds. Unfortunately, it's slightly out of focus, but still kind of interesting:

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After the CAAC, we rode bikes over to the grocery store. Then walked home. Dinner and a restful evening followed.

Artificial Birds

Today was a pretty mathy day. It's nice when you have an idea and it's meaty enough to get you through the whole day. Even better when it's all pencil and paper:

In my continued quest to escape the urban landscape, I found a 4 hour youtube video that is a recording of a forest somewhere in the northeast. With that playing in the background all day, sometimes you actually feel like you're in a forest in upstate PA--the bird calls are so familiar to someone that grew up there. I actually am now devising ways in which I might make my own long recording of some PA forest sounds.

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It rained a lot today. There was a slight break in the afternoon and I was able to sneak in my daily walk/run, but I got rained on for a bit. I also did some laundry. I set the drying rack up in the living room under the room heater. With the heater and a fan, everything dried by this evening except the jeans. Even they're pretty close to dry. I need to do another load tomorrow, but the forecast seems more amenable to outdoor drying. Fingers crossed.

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Our habit has been to go out to eat once a week on Friday and to try different places around Sevilla. This week we decided to switch to Thursdays to avoid weekend crowds. We went to a place recommended by one of Laura's classmates called Bar Antojo:

One of the nice things about tapas is the variety is endless and they're cheap, so it really encourages you to just try stuff. We usually get 3 and share. This evening we tried some croquettes, a leek concoction, and very blackened cod:

All of it was really good and I think we'd both be happy to go back. I'm not a huge fan of fish, but the cod was amazing. The black crust was so good. I have no idea how it was made. They also had beer:

Cruzcampo is the lifeblood of Sevilla. I have grown quite fond of it.

Why Is There Something?

Last fall when Laura and I first started thinking about where to spend this year, the one thing we agreed on was that we would live in a Spanish speaking country because we were both interested in learning the language. We both started using the free language learning app, DuoLingo, to learn Spanish. Like a lot of apps, DuoLingo keeps track of "streaks, the number of days in a row that you meet some minimum standard of work. We've continued to use the app here in Spain. This morning my streak hit 365:

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It was a bit rainy today. I got rained on during my walk/run this morning. But it was a bit warmer, so that helped a bit.

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Nice to have the election behind us.

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Talked to Emily this evening (morning her time). Got a lot of screen time with Benji the bunny!

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I went to my language class this afternoon. It's interesting to me how often student miss class. At 110 euros for 8 classes, I'm not missing any of them, haha. Today it was 3 Americans, a Belgian and a German. We had a nice time.

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On the way home, the sun came out. I took a couple of pictures along the way. The churro and chocolate stand on the corner:

The river was beautiful as always:

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Palma let us know of a "science" lecture series at a bar owned by her sister. This evening a physicist tried to explain why there is something instead of nothing. I've actually read a book on this subject called Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt. Holt's book comes at this age-old question from lots of different angles. Laura and I decided to head over to the talk and see if we could understand any of the Spanish. Unfortunately, the talk was more popular than we expected and there was no room in the bar. We watched and listed at the back for a while, but eventually I got tired of standing. The speaker went at the question from a purely physics approach, not a philosophical one.

My personal response to the question is simply that we wouldn't be able to ask the question if nothing existed. Or, put another way, we can only ask the question why does the world exist from a perspective of existence. Even more simply, the world exists because it exists.

Here's the view from the back: