99% Wrong

I realize sitting down to write this that I didn't post the promised videos from last night's visit to the square to see who was on the concert stage. The challenge is that I take all these photos and videos on my phone. When I get home, the phone uploads all the stuff to my google photos. I can't put anything into these pages until that upload finishes. The internet here in the flat isn't bad for downloading, but for uploading I suspect it's not much better than the old phone modems we used to have in the 90's. Especially when there's a video, I think the uploads aren't finishing until well into the night. I guess the move is to just post them a day late. So, here are a couple of videos from last night's performance. I should give credit to who these performers are, but I can't find any information about them anywhere:

 

Tomorrow, I'll post the video I took just now at this evening's performances.

This morning I went out for a run. I ran about 4 miles out along the river, found a bike share station and rode back home. It was a nice combination that I think I'll keep trying.

Laura received her absentee ballot from Walla Walla, filled it out and was ready to mail it (for some reason, mine has yet to arrive, even though, presumably they were both mailed at the same time). We went to the local post office to make sure it received the correct postage, but it was closed (summer hours):

We did notice that there was another post office listed on the sign as having longer hours. Also, it was in the direction of Laura's language school, so we walked over that way. It was open, there wasn't really any waiting and the postal clerk was quite efficient. Laura's vote is on its way back to Walla Walla and should get there well before the Aug 7th election date. We continued from the post office to the language school passing by the Catedral de Sevilla:

The main entrance really is impressive. We haven't been on the tour yet. We're saving it for a rainy day, literally. I'm looking forward to seeing the inside though. With Laura in class, I walked back home (obligatory photo from the bridge):

I spent the afternoon doing math, as per usual. A mathematician's life is mostly coming up with conjectures and convincing yourself (and others) that they're correct. Unfortunately, you have to get used to being wrong... a lot. About 99 out of 100 conjectures that a mathematician comes up with are wrong somehow. The other 1 out of 100, we prove and subsequently publish. I have a conjecture I've been working on for a couple of days now and today I proved it was wrong. I was disappointed. I really liked it. But, not surprised.

Later in the afternoon, while working on the next conjecture, I realized that my proof of the incorrectness of the earlier conjecture was... incorrect. I've been doing this for a while and the mixed emotions are weird. On the one hand, the conjecture that I liked lives to fight another day. On the other hand, I made a mistake convincing myself that it was false. Things like this happen all the time with math. I'm sure after a few hours tomorrow, I'll again convince myself that the conjecture is false and a few hours after that, I'll convince myself that my argument for why it's false is correct. But, it's fun and I'm looking forward to playing around with it again tomorrow.

As I alluded to earlier, this evening, after Laura got home from class, we went out to the square to see who was on stage tonight. I'll post video tomorrow, but the one photo we took, a selfie of us, at least, has been uploaded to google:

One more day of the festival left. We'll see who's playing on stage tomorrow evening.

Street Urchins

Mario left some adhesive felt to put on the feet of the desk he brought us a couple of days ago. We decided to just put the desk on a small piece of area rug, so felt not needed there. However, our dining room chairs make a lot of noise when sliding around on the tile floors, so we decided to use the felt squares on them instead:

So far, so good.

We went to the supermarket this morning--a daily ritual. Along the way, we scoped out the local post office.

It's a bit off the beaten path, but not far from the apartment. It's also quite new and modern--a step up from most of the drab, bureaucratic post offices in the US. More like a FedEx or Kinkos than a post office.

Since we always walk and carry our groceries back to the flat, we have to be careful about what and how much we buy. One way to control that is to not use the regular sized grocery carts, but instead just use the smaller baskets. The small baskets here are really nice. They have wheels and you pull them around by long handles:

You get the small size you're looking for, but you don't have to carry it around the store while you shop.

After shopping and lunch, Laura went to Spanish class and I stayed home and did math. I had another relatively productive afternoon. This evening I took the trash down to the bins and snapped a couple of pictures in the waning light. This is just the face of the building above the Triana Marketplace. I think it's just flats:

 This is a small chapel right at the foot of our bridge (on our side):

 This is looking across the river at Sevilla proper:

When Laura got home, we went around the corner to see who was playing on the stage this evening at the Triana festival. I have some video, but the phone is taking forever to upload it, so I'll post it here tomorrow.

When we got back to our building, the area around our entryway was occupied by this "scary" gang of kids. Apparently they get to play around in the alley while their parents enjoy the beer & tapas bar across the way:

La Velá de Triana continues

La Velá de Triana continues here in the neighborhood although not much happens in the daylight hours. There was another greased pole/capture the flag thing happening on the river this evening. Most stuff happens in the evening from around 8pm to around 1am.

Last night we went out to the square where there is a temporary stage in place. The crowd was pretty healthy:

The first performer was an older guy singing with a guitar accompaniment. Later on, a younger, flamenco style singer took over:

It's definitely a pro-Triana affair with all of the performers talking about how Triana is "the best" neighborhood in Sevilla etc. We did hit a gelato place before heading home. The two workers there were very busy, but also very friendly. One of them helped Laura come up with a great combo of dark chocolate and some kind of toffee gelato. Here's them working while we had our gelatos in the shop:

My normal shirt of choice is an unmarked t-shirt. T-shirts are pretty popular here. Nearly all of them have some kind of english phrase on the front. My t-shirts stand out by their boringness. That said, today I wore one of two shirts total that I have with me that have writing on them. In this case, my University of Miami Band t-shirt:

The other one is from the Sawtooth Grill in Hood River.

I put in a good amount of math work this afternoon. Laura had her Spanish class. I met her after class and we went to a photo shop to get me some passport pictures. I'm going to get an "international drivers permit" so that we can rent cars here in Spain (an IDP is required).

After dinner, I watched a little Rick & Morty on Netflix. At 10pm, we headed out to see who/what was on stage this evening. Looked like a live comedy radio show. I barely know Spanish, so watching a comedy gig in Spanish was not going to work for us. We continued to walk around a bit. We saw a local police car:

 The beer & tapas tent street was packed again:

 The tents stretch a good solid block along the river:

 Our street is closed to cars:

 But that didn't stop folks from patronizing the beer & tapas place across from our flat:

Looking forward to seeing what happens here tomorrow. Until then...

Greased Pole

The official start of La Velá de Triana was last night at midnight. Laura and I went out to the bridge to see what might happen and to see the lighting of our bridge (the best bridge). Here's a before and after from below:

 In this after shot, the strings of lights above the bridge are now lighted:

Unfortunately, the bridge is so beautifully lit from below, that this perspective doesn't really impress. Here's a picture from up on the bridge:

The crowds along the "tent" street were more like throngs:

As if there aren't enough beer & tapas places already, each of these tents along the river is basically a beer & tapas place. Here's one in the daylight:

The main Triana square was also nicely lit:

It was worth staying up later than usual to see the spectacle.

Today was laundry day. It's amazing how quickly our clothes dry on the rooftop clotheslines. It doesn't hurt that our washing machine spins at 1200 rpm and sounds like it's going to take off when it's really going. That high spin wrings nearly every last drop of water out of the clothes and they're practically dry when you pull them out of the washer, haha.

This afternoon we walked to the Alameda de Hércules. This open square on the Sevilla side was established in the 16th century. Laura and I had walked here before and I proposed we walk there again this afternoon, not because of the square, but because of a building along the way that I wanted to get a closer look at and to take pictures of. The building, Fundación Escuelas Profesionales de la Sagrada Familia, is one of a number of secondary and professional schools that serve students without the means to attend expensive private schools. These schools are all over this part of Spain and have a tradition in Catholicism. That aside, the facade of the building is so intricate and interesting:

This one strip at eye level had so much detail:

We looked at it for a long time. Passing folks probably thought we were weird, haha. Our walk took us home just in time to see the greased pole capture the flag event on the river. A pole is extended from a boat out over the water, liberally greased and a flag is attached to the free end. Competitors attempt to walk/run out to the end of the pole and grab the flag. People gather at the riverside to watch and cheer. Here's an example:

We watched for a while. Eventually, one of them succeeded. I really wish I had that on video. The whole crowd erupted in cheers.

There are some more events in the coming days. There is some kind of concert this evening at 10pm on the square. I'll let you know about that tomorrow.

La Velá de Triana

Laura went on an extended field trip to Costco (yes, there's a Costco here, the only one in Spain). It's about 7km from here, so she got there via a combination of walking and using the bike share. She didn't get much, but she was able to verify that our US membership works here in Spain. She also noted a few items that are hard to find around our flat like bagels, chocolate chips (for cookies) etc.

I stayed home. I had already been out for my run and was more interested in a relaxing day on the couch, haha. I did actually get some groceries in for us to tide us over Sunday when all the stores are closed. I used the bike share to get to our go to market, Mercadona, which is about 1 km from the flat. I also did some of the weekly cleaning of the flat, vacuuming, toilet etc.

Laura made some refried beans out of pinto beans yesterday. (Refried beans are another thing that you can't find easily here.) I had bean burritos for lunch (tortillas are easy to find) and they were pretty good. With the rest of the pinto beans, Laura made chili. We had that for dinner and it too was very good.

Laura and I went back to the Mercadona this evening to pick up a couple of things. On the way home we saw this fancy horse and carriage:

You do tend to see these a lot on the Sevilla side, but not too often on the Triana side. Also, not this fancy. We noticed that there was a wedding going on a couple of blocks down the street and surmised that this carriage was heading to that event.

The official start of La Velá de Triana was at midnight. Laura and I just went out to see the bridge lighting. It's really busy out there, lot's of people. Pictures are still uploading and I'm going to bed. Will post pictures tomorrow.