Letter of Rec

It's the time of year for letters of recommendation. Graduate school applications typically have deadlines in Dec and Jan. Students typically start asking me for letters of recommendation for their applications around this time of year. Today I dedicated mostly to writing letters and managed to clear my inbox! There will be more, but it's nice to have emptied the queue.

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My crick was back with a vengeance this morning. But, I put ice on it, took some advil, tried some heat and have it back down to mild inconvenience level right now. I'm going to try a different pillow tonight.

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My "office" window looks out onto the street. Across the way, there is a parking area for residents of that building. It's actually pretty interesting. There isn't one wasted square meter of pavement. The residents seem to have worked out some system where if one is blocked in, others will move. I don't know if they have some kind of car key repository or what, but it seems to work:

The only way out is through that gap right behind the black car in the middle. A couple of days ago, I realized how nice it was to live in a country where people can't own guns. At some point in the afternoon, one of the residents wanted to leave the lot, but some random car had parked across the entry, like this guy:

This happens a lot. Most times, the entryway blockers aren't far or aren't gone for more than a couple of minutes, but a couple of days ago, somebody blocked them in for like 15 minutes. The angry residents honked and honked, but nobody every showed up. At one point, they tried to push the offending vehicle out of the way, to no avail. Ultimately, the driver returned. He was immediately surrounded by 3 angry residents. I've never heard Spanish at that speed, or ferocity. If there had been guns around, I'm pretty sure somebody would've died.

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We had a nice day today. Clear and warm. Very much unlike Walla Walla where they are currently stuck in an inversion with the temperature a steady 28 degrees for the past 72 hours. Sunset was so pretty this evening that I went up to the roof and snapped this:

Crick

Woke up with a crick in my neck this morning. Grrr. It was also raining, so I didn't go out for my walk/run. In the end, it was probably for the best. I worked for several hours this morning, but that crick just kept getting crick-ier. I laid down for a bit and that seemed to help. I walked over to the grocery store with Laura for the regular food shopping. By the time I got back, it was crick-ier again.

I went to Spanish class at 4pm, but wasn't very good. Hard to concentrate. I did a little more work this evening. Also, talked to Rachel for a bit. She's handling a warranty exchange for one of my computers and is trying to wipe the data from it before sending it off. After signing off with Rachel, I laid down and watched a bit of Netflix. I'm less crick-ey now as I write this.

I'm hoping tomorrow morning when I wake up, it'll be gone.

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Side note, there are generic Spanish sour cream & onion Pringles:

They're not bad. "Crema y cebolla" means "sour cream & onion". Funny that they have sour cream and onion chips, but you have to go to some random, seedy Russian bodega to buy actual sour cream here.

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.