Malls for Miles

Last week while I was away, Laura reported in her blog that a new mall had opened up near our flat on our side of the river. Today we went over to have another look around (me for a first look). I still can't get over that all of this construction was going on in a place that I walked by dozens of times and there wasn't really a hint. Here's a map of the mall:

There are three floors of underground parking. There's a garden on the roof. It has a lovely indoor/outdoor design. Plus, we found a reusable ice pack in the farmacia there. We'd been kind of looking around for one for several weeks. There are a few chain restaurants in there that might be nice. There's also a "Target-like" department store called Primark that seems to be all the rage. It did seem reasonably priced and might be a good place to look for clothing as we get into the cooler months and start discovering gaps in the clothes that we brought over from the US in July.

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I slept until 9:15am this morning. Hoping to get up a little earlier tomorrow as I get back onto Sevilla time.

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Talked to Emily a bit this evening. She went to see about vaccinations for her Ethiopia trip and ended up with just a flu shot and some typhoid pills and some advice about how to reduce the risk of contracting other diseases while there. Mostly it's about preventing mosquito bites.

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I guess it's our turn for painting now. Mario informs us that our building will be undergoing some painting for the next 4-6 weeks. Mostly on the roof and the interior courtyard and patio. Unfortunately, we will lose access to the clotheslines on the roof. He kindly supplied us with a drying rack for here inside the flat. We managed with just a drying rack in Hungary with 4 people for a year, so I'm guessing we'll make this work too.

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I'm writing a little applied math article on using smartphone sensor data in the math classroom. I've been reading about numerical differentiation and GPS error. Interesting stuff. I tried to record 10 minutes of GPS data in the park today while reading, but must've screwed something up because the data file was empty when I got home. I'll try again tomorrow.

Back in Sevilla

Nice to be back home. The flights all ran on time and bus from the airport to the flat was also timely and easy. The flight to Madrid was a bit of a slog, but I managed to sleep about half of it away. I was glad I had a 2 hr layover in Madrid before my flight to Sevilla. Passport control in Madrid took about 45 mins, then you have to leave and reenter security because the Sevilla flight is in the domestic terminal.


The bus dropped me relatively close to the flat--on the other side of the bridge. I rolled my bag across the bridge:

My eating and sleeping is all wonky, but I really appreciated this sign that Laura left on the fridge:

Laura just got home from class so all is back to normal here in Sevilla. Hoping I can stay up until 11pm and sleep until 7am.

Back to Spain

Rachel and I spent the day "working" in her living room. We each sat there in front of our computers, but I'm guessing we were cruising along at about 20% efficiency haha. We'd work, we'd talk, we'd go to lunch, work, talk, go to campus, work, talk, go to dinner, talk, drive to the airport. Overall, I had a good trip, a nice visit with Rachel, and a productive meeting. Right now it seems worth the effort, but I'll let you know tomorrow after this 8 hr red-eye to Madrid followed by a quick jump to Sevilla and the bus home from the airport. It's currently 3:40am in Sevilla. I expect to get to the flat sometime around 6pm Sevilla time. Still a lot of travel between me and home.

During one of our walks today, Rachel and I passed by the statue of the University of Miami mascot, Sebastian. I took a picture of Rachel next to Sebastian:

You can probably tell that the sun was beating down on this whole situation. Rachel's grimace is due to the fact that the bronze statue was about 4,000 degrees.

This evening, we went to Swenson's for dinner. I had a pretty good club sandwich. Rachel had a salad. It was a large salad, so she took half home for lunch tomorrow. Here's one last selfie for the road:

Walmart Sunrise

Got up bright and early in UT this morning. I don't think I ever really transitioned over to the Mountain Time Zone. That's probably fine since I've got to get back to Spain tomorrow anyway. The sunrise this morning in Orem as I was heading to my car to drive to the airport was beautiful. The mountain to the east of the hotel across Utah Lake was well lit.

This is possibly the most iconic photo of 'murica you could take. In the foreground you have the vast expanse of the roof of a Walmart. In the medium distance, the billowing US flag. In the distance, the mountains majesty.

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Not much to report today. Flights were all on time. I flew Southwest to Phoenix, then over to Ft. Lauderdale. About 6.5 hrs of air time, but low stress and efficient. Rachel picked me up at FLL and drove me to her place. We made a quick pit stop at Taco Bell for dinner. My temporary bed on Rachel's couch is all made up. I'm just sitting here waiting until 10:50pm when I can check into my British Airways flight back to Spain (Sevilla via Madrid).

Stained Glass

Day 2 of the conference. Productive. Marina and I have started drafting a minor in data science. Based on what we've seen here from folks in industry and at other schools, we already have the courses, really just a matter of packaging them together into a sequence for students to take.

The Utah Valley campus is impressive. The buildings are new, clean. The quad is lovely. There's a beautiful water feature in the quad:

The feature at the top has a sheet of water that looks really cool in slo-motion:

There's an alcove in one of the buildings that has a wall of stained glass under the heading "Roots of Knowledge". It's a kind of history of human knowledge in stained glass. It's an impressive piece of art--especially for a mid-sized public university.

Here is a close up of one of the panes:

I liked the juxtaposition of the mathematician Euler and Independence Hall. I'd never really contemporized those two entities.

I took Marina to the airport in SLC after the meeting. We stopped at Pizzaria Limone on the way up. Pretty tasty.

I fly out tomorrow morning. I'm taking two colleagues from Morehouse College to the airport with me. They were attending this workshop to help prepare for when they host a similar workshop at Morehouse later this year.