Dressing for it

Feria is underway. People all over the city (tourists, and long-term American residents excluded) were dressed in their finery and headed to the feria grounds. Many of them in horse-drawn carriages:

Laura and I planned to head over there ourselves to see the "day-feria", but time sort of got away from us. In the end, it will probably be a little less crazy tomorrow, so until then...

Another side-effect of feria is the rest of the city is a ghost town:

Julie bought lunch today and then came home with a variety of pastries for our evening snack:

***

I worked a bit on my data science project this morning. At one point, when I woke up my computer, I was presented with this random photo on the windows login screen:

Turns out this is Chefchaouen, Morocco a.k.a. "the blue city" which I've visited twice this year and would go again in a heartbeat. Thing is, in this age of no digital privacy, I have no idea if this is truly a random coincidence, or if it's just windows somehow showing me what it thinks I want based on what it knows about me by monitoring my every digital interaction over the past 6 months.

Opening Night

I didn't bring too many articles of clothing with me to Spain. Now, 10+ months into it, the clothes I have are getting kind of worn. In addition, I've intentionally lost a bit of weight. The combination prompted me to go the Primark today with Laura to get a couple of pairs of shorts and some pants. It was pretty crowded over there, but I managed to find some pieces that will at least get me through the rest of my time here. I'm going to retire a couple of articles of clothing by leaving them in the dumpster area down by the bridge (where we bring our regular refuse). People regularly scour that area for usable items like clothing and shoes. I left an old pair of shoes there a few months ago and someone claimed them before I was 20 meters away.

***

Feria starts tonight at midnight. The grounds are all prepared now. Laura and I wandered down there this evening to have a look at the grounds before the crowds showed up. Walking south through Triana from our house, you get to Calle Asunción, which is a lot like the main street in our neighborhood. A mostly pedestrian way with shops and cafes. At the end of this street is the main entrance to the feria grounds:

Here's a closer view:

Tonight at midnight, this entrance will be lighted, and the week-long feria begins. The sandy grounds which are empty the majority of the year are now covered with tents called "casetas" along temporary avenues. The casetas are typically green/white or red/white striped canvas. They erected in the weeks leading up to feria and are "owned" by families that have had these spots for generations, or other organizations:

People dress up in their finest. Some of the casetas are quite large:

The avenues are decked out:

Already the street cleaning is underway. Tonight there will be thousands of people in this makeshift city:

Inside the casetas, the tables are set and waiting for friends and family to arrive:

 ***

On a completely unrelated note, this license plate hanging in a restaurant window caught my eye as we walked home:

Clustering

I started reading about clustering today in my data science review. I have some ideas on how to apply clustering to my Whitman STEM data set. The thing that's interesting about clustering is these algorithms help you find patterns in your data that you may not be aware of. It's a form of unsupervised learning.

***

This afternoon, I walked Laura to class and then headed over to the gym. The jacarandas around Sevilla are in full bloom and they're really beautiful:

The various trellises are filling up too:

***

Juli is getting onto Spain time. She spent a lot of time walking around this afternoon seeing all the places she hasn't seen in about 20 years. She seems to be enjoying herself.

Juli's here

Another warm day in Sevilla. My first day post paper submission and I spent it working on some STEM data from Whitman and reading an intro machine learning textbook. The STEM data is really just an excuse to polish my pandas skills. Even though I've been away from it for a while, I still remember most of it. Even better, some of the more abstract stuff like groupby() and merge() are a bit clearer to me.

***

I walked Laura to school, then back over to the gym. Here's the view from Puente de San Telmo:

Rode the stationary bike for about an hour. I really like their bikes.

***

Laura went to Costco after her class. I hung out here to meet Juli. She got here about as expected. She's pretty tired from a long trip starting in Walla Walla. I just showed her to her room, gave her a brief bathroom tutorial and withdrew. Hopefully she can get a good night's sleep--although the bar/cafe across the street will be going full on until about 12:30am. I recommended earplugs, but that was not necessary, she came prepared.

Laura's bus from Costco broke down, so she had to get off and wait for the next one. Needless to say, she's running a bit late.

May Day

Marge was up and out relatively early today. She caught the bus to the airport at about 9am this morning. She made it to the airport on time. We haven't heard anything since, but assume she's well on her way to Madrid where tomorrow she catches a flight back to Walla Walla. Really nice person. Fun getting to know her.

***

May 1st is a national holiday in Spain (and in much of Europe). It's the equivalent of Labor Day in the US. With the lovely weather and thd day off, folks were out in droves today. All the cafes were packed.

I went to the gym today and had the place to myself. (Like I said, the cafes were packed, haha.)

***

Taking the trash out this evening, when I happened upon a bit of commotion in our courtyard. A couple of neighbor kids trying to catch a dragonfly perched on the wall:

Ultimately, they succeeded. Dragonfly safely ensconced in ziploc bag:

***

After dropping the trash in the bin, we stopped for brownie helado at Villar:

This was a bit of a reward for finally submitting my paper today. Tomorrow I have to task switch. I'm going to dig back down into some data science for a while.