JMM Day 1

I spent day 1 of the Joint Mathematics Meeting going to talks (what else?). In addition to talks on technology in the classroom, placement testing, and virtual reality, I saw Sarah Koch give an interesting talk on complex dynamics. At one point she showed a figure and labeled three important components as "airplane", "rabbit" and "co-rabbit". Here's a crappy photo of the slide:

It's cold here! There's snow on the ground outside the convention center. My Sevilla-trained blood is not ready for this:

The convention center is lovely. Everything is easy to find. There's a pretty fountain at one end:

Scott went out to dinner with a friend. I just grabbed some Greek food and then walked to a Whole Foods to grab some fruit to get me through the week. There is a real dearth of grocery stores in the area. The Whole Foods was a little over a mile away and nothing closer according to Google.

To Baltimore

I slept pretty well considering the 6 hour time difference. I woke up at around 6am (noon Spain time). I went out for a walk/run. Came back, did a little Spanish practice. Then, I went to Einstein Bagels to get breakfast. I had a pumpernickel bagel with cream cheese. It was excellent. When I got back to Rachel's house, she was up and heading to her 9:30am econometrics class. It was the first day of her new semester.

I showered and went out to Walmart to get a list of things we can't find in Spain: advil, mucinex, Pilot G-2 pens, dental floss, deodorant etc. Just to be clear, most of these things can be found in Spain, but not the brands or amounts we're interested in. I drove the Honda. The little lizard that took up residence in the side view mirror:

was gone.

After my Walmart trip, I worked until Rachel came home from work around 2pm. We took in a quick lunch at Taco Bell and dessert at ChillN Nitrogen Ice Cream shop:


The ice cream was excellent, as always. We went back to Rachel's and I helped her install GitHub for her new class.

***

My flight to Baltimore for the math conference left Ft Lauderdale at 7:20pm. With the gov't shutdown still going, I was concerned about back ups at TSA security, so I decided to try to get there 2 hours in advance. To save Rachel the long, congested drive up there to FLL, I took the Miami metro, transferred to the TriRail, transferred to a shuttle bus and got to FLL in 2 hrs--about 90 mins before my flight. No worries about TSA, the lines were empty and I got through right away. I killed an hour at the gate, endured another 2 hours of flying, got to BWI at around 9:45pm, walked to the light rail station at the far end of the airport and caught the train downtown to my hotel. Here's one of the many forms of transportation I encountered on my trip:

The TriRail at the transfer point just north of the Miami airport:

I got to the hotel around 10:30pm. My roommate, Scott, was already there. We chatted a bit and I dropped into bed.

Back in the US

This morning, Rachel and I got up bright and early to catch the airport bus at Plaza de Armas. We bade Laura farewell, hitched up our roller bags and hiked to the bus station. The bus was pretty quick, as was airport security in Sevilla, so we got to our gate with about an hour before boarding.

The Sevilla flight was on time to Madrid. We negotiated the maze of Madrid and got to our gate for the Miami flight with plenty of time to spare. The Madrid-Miami flight was pretty full and we didn't sit together. It was on time though. I sat next to a guy headed to Nicaragua. He didn't speak any English, so he was good Spanish practice for me. Nine hours later and a lot of reading and video watching later, we made it through customs in Miami and waited for our checked bags. While there we saw a cute little beagle sniffing bags for contraband fruit:

He actually sniffed out to apples that this poor guy bought at the Mercadona for snack on the flight. They took his passport and put him and his bags through the full inspection in a side room:

The beagle earned a tidbit as a reward from his handler (at least some of the federal employees here are getting paid, haha).

Shubham picked us up at the airport. We took him to Baja Fresh for dinner as a thank you:

Now I'm back at Rachel's trying to stay up until 10pm in an effort to adapt to the new time zone (6 hour difference from Sevilla).

End of an era

Rachel arrived in Sevilla on Dec 11th and, as I write this, is packing to leave tomorrow morning. She wasn't here in the flat the whole time. She spent a few days with a friend in Morocco and 5 days at a conference in Malaga, but this has been her home away from home for over a month. It's the end of an era, haha:

This weekend we've been hitting lot's of places to eat. We had lunch at Pad Thai Wok. Rachel's noodles were pretty spicy. Maybe the spiciest dish in all of Spain (where the cuisine is generally spice avoidant):

I went out for a run along the river. It's still strange to me to see flowers blooming in January (not complaining):

This evening, Rachel got a chocolate croissant for breakfast tomorrow. We stopped at Manu Jara widely recognized as one of the best pastry shops in Sevilla:

I've got to go finish packing.

Sunny Afternoon

As Sevilla puts the somewhat frantic Christmas season behind it, schools are back in session, work schedules return to normal, the weather has been consistently clear and sunny. Cold mornings, relatively mild afternoons. It was fun to see so many folks sunning themselves along the bank of the river. Students after their first week back in school, adults after their first week back at work:

Rachel made it back to Sevilla from Malaga late yesterday evening. Today, we found her some souvenirs to take back to the US. We went to the mall and over to the grocery store. On the way home, we hit the helado shoppe:

I tried the chocolate mousse flavor a departure from the brownie I usually get. It was ok, but I like the brownie better. Rachel mixed brownie with raspberry sorbet. That was a winner. I'm going to try that the next time I go.