Rice University

My first night in Houston was sleepless, thanks to this:
Hey, I can't pass up Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope! Actually I only watched a few minutes, then I crashed. The next morning was Friday the 9th. Rice University had a shuttle pick us up for the morning workshops. The tower at Rice (I'll post the name later):
It was Spring Break, so there were no students around. Just squirrels and birds chattering noisily in the morning...

This photo was taken after the lunch crowd cleared out at the South Servery in Hanszen College(Rice is divided into smaller sub-colleges). Breakfast and lunch were provided by Rice. We got to serve ourselves in the cafeteria. The food was decent. Way better than when I was in college.

Lovett Hall, considered "the grand principal building of the university "(according to Wikipedia) :

Hersztein Hall, located to the left of Lovett Hall:

Closeup of Hersztein Hall:

Archway near Sewall Hall:

Another view of Lovett:

That Friday, after workshops were over, we trekked across campus (we found out later it was a needless detour because it took us 40 minutes to do what could have been a 20 minute walk to Rice Village) to meet my co-workers husband who was at a local bar there. I really liked the painted designs on this brick building on campus. It's either the Abercrombie Engineering Lab or Duncan Hall:

The tower again:

One of the huge rock sculptures near the tower building (Mechanical Engineering). I found out later that this area was the Engineering Quad which is centered on a set of three sculptures by Michael Heizer collectively entitled "45/90/180". Here are two of the massive sculptures:

Here's the other one:

It's three miles around the campus. We walked about 40 minutes on this path along. Our pace was a bit slow because one of my colleagues is pregnant and her feet were tired. This was the dirt jogging path along Rice Blvd.

Some of the houses (shall I say "mini mansions") along Rice Blvd:

Rice Stadium...Did you know their University mascot is an Owl?

These photos were taken on Saturday:

These rather curious looking objects were all over certain parts of the university grounds. I looked at one closely, thinking it was a nest of some sort. It looked like a parasitic plant. Those were long blades. It was definitely a plant, not a nest. [Edit: I emailed the pics to our school's Biology and Environmental Science teacher last night. He and his wife figured it was some sort of Spanish moss. After more web searching, I believe this is Ball Moss . Here's more info here]

The ball moss were all over various trees and their branches. There were also branches and twigs on the ground with ball moss, which either blew down with strong winds or the ball moss got too heavy and the branches broke as a result. At another park we saw, a huge tree was literally covered with these "plants".

A sculpture by our lunch area. There were swings and hammocks all over campus which has hundreds of trees.

Hanszen College:

The following photos were taken on my last day there. Here is the University's namesake, William Marsh Rice.

An early morning view of the Rice statue from afar:

Sewall Hall...the site of our last workshop:

My colleagues and I attended the Counselor Workshops on the International Baccalaureate (IB) Programme and learned quite a bit about the ins and outs and how other schools run their programs. It was a fun trip but tiring since we lost an hour on the way back (daylight savings time). Our plane flew THROUGH and ABOVE a thundestorm (you could see the lightning from the windows) and we experienced major turbulence, but nothing too alarming. We made it safely back home and I was extremely glad to see Bert and TC again. I missed TC so much that I carried her like a koala bear as she ran into my outstretched arms.