Empty Nest

This morning we got up early so Emily could catch the bus to the Sevilla airport to begin her long journey home to Santa Barbara. After farewells, she and I caught the bus out to the airport. I left her at the security line. As I write this, she's about half way through her Madrid to Los Angeles flight:

I've been following it for the past 6 hours. I still feel a little bad about what she went through to get here and back. I don't wish a 12 hour flight and a 9 hour time change on anybody. That said, it was nice spending time with her and Rachel.

Speaking of Rachel, she arranged to meet her friend Emily (different Emily), in Tangier these next few days. Emily is teaching music at a K-12 school in Casablanca, Morocco. Casablanca is a two-hour train ride south of Tangier, so they're kind of meeting in the middle. I went to back to the airport bus stop with Rachel this afternoon, but didn't go to the airport with her. Since she's coming back to Sevilla, she was able to just take my bus pass with her. After a much shorter flight, she's already tucked into her airbnb with Emily in Tangier (I spoke to her on the phone).

This is her giving me the thumbs up after she got on the airport bus. She'll be back on Saturday, but Laura and I are getting a preview of our impending Sevilla empty nest for the next couple of days. After three weeks of guests, Taylor, Rachel, Emily, Kathy and Ric; two trips, Granada and Tangier; things are a little too quiet, haha.

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Sevilla is still in holiday mode until Jan 6th. Public schools don't resume until Jan 7th. Life was kind of back to the normal hustle and bustle in the neighborhood today, but maybe a bit more so because the children are still out of school.

I got a bit of work done today. Tomorrow, I expect to put in another full day.

Laura went back to her Spanish class today for the first time in 2 weeks. Her teacher from last semester, Lucia, has left the school and is moving to Australia. Her new teacher, Carmen, seems good so far.

Photo Shoot

Today was Emily's last full day in Sevilla. We decided to go out to a park and get Rachel to take some family photos. Given the subject matter, some of them turned out ok:

No doubt due to her superb focusing ability.

When it wasn't the whole family on a timer, Rachel turned to Emily as subject:

Some shots were better than others. Some were just funny:

After pictures in the park, we went to a flamenco show. No pictures during the show, but they graciously posed/performed for photos at the end:

One last helado for Emily:

(she had chocolate mousse by the way, it was really good, I'll have to try it next time).

la Noche Vieja

Happy New Year!

Parque del Alamillo

Another low-key day. A lot of us catching up on work. Emily has a bit of a cold. She was interested in finding a place to do pull-ups, dips and other such exercises. We went to a little outdoor gym at Parque del Alamillo up at the north end of the river. She and I rode bikes up there and walked across the bridge to the park:

We found a water fountain:

The exercise area was populated with some very buff dudes doing all kinds of impressive things. Emily did a few exercises, but we decided to stop early and just walk around the park. The weather was beautiful and there were a lot of people out and about. We happened upon a pond that had a water ski course. Instead of boats, skiers were pulled across the water by a cable system.

Laura went to Costco and picked up some cranberries for her cranberry chicken dish. We had that for dinner and it was most excellent.

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We finished the evening watching a John Mulaney standup show on Netflix. That's the first I've seen of him, funny guy.

Last night we watched the movie Eighth Grade by Bo Burnham. It was hard to watch at times, but wonderfully well-executed. It definitely made you feel for kids with acute anxiety.

Biker Gang

 On my walk/run along the river today, I saw this family of bike riders. Their bikes were decked out in a biker gang motif. The mom, dad and child were all wearing biker clothing too. It was kinda cute. The dad's bike was real work of art:

This evening a male flamenco dancer put out his hat on San Jacinto. This is kind of unusual since most of the buskers tend to go to the Cathedral area where there are more tourists. He was pretty good:

We went out for a walk to "Las Setas" so Emily could see them. Underneath, there was an ice rink. Watching some skate really well and others not so much was actually pretty entertaining:

We stopped in a clothing store on the way home called Pull & Bear. The words printed on the fronts of some of the t-shirts and sweatshirts were positively inane:

This one from "California Town" was particularly humorous. Rachel got a hoody with Pull & Bear on the front.