Greetings from Home

We went to Duke University on Thursday to see if Daniel might be interested in attending the engineering school, which offers a separate tour from the general campus tour. We got there a bit early, walked through part of the beautiful gardens and visited the chapel -- which is quite large and has gorgeous stained glass -- before taking the engineering tour, which visited a lot of lab and design rooms as well as the big environmentally friendly atrium. Afterward we walked to the English department and met my Medieval and Renaissance lit professor from Penn, Maureen Quilligan, who is now on Duke's faculty. We ate lunch in the Refectory Cafe which apparently is where the div school students hang out.

Our original plan was to take the hour-plus campus walking tour after the hour-long introductory session and slide show at the admissions building, but we were so fried from the 100-degree heat that we ended up doing our own abbreviated walking tour and visiting the bookstore briefly before heading to Charlottesville. Daniel liked the Duke campus but I'm not sure he was impressed with the robotics lab. We had intended to stay the night in Charlottesville and tour UVA in the morning, but though we had a pretty drive with only drizzle and fog in the mountains, Charlottesville had been smacked by a massive storm that took down trees and left much of the city with no power, phone service, or air conditioning. Our hotel expected to be without power till 9 and most restaurants were closed, so we postponed the visit and drove the extra two hours home and now I am too tired to type any more!


Approaching the chapel at Duke University from the gardens...


...and inside the chapel facing the chancel. The building is decorated not only with religious figures but with important figures from the American South.


The campus has gorgeous tall pines and magnolias, plus extensive gardens with ponds and waterfalls.


Here is Adam climbing one of the trees.


The flowers looked cooler than we felt -- sadly, there were no sprinklers for people!


The squirrels tolerated the heat quite well and were fearless about begging for food -- clearly they are related to every other university squirrel I've ever met.


I was a failure at remembering to take photos of the interesting architecture in the engineering buildings because I was paying attention to our tour guide. Here is one of the lecture rooms.


Myself and Maureen finishing lunch in the Refectory.