Air Conditioning

One of the most important things to know about Houston is that it is an air-conditioned city. It's understandable, given that it is unbearably hot and humid outside. What makes less sense is the seemingly universal decision to have a 20+ degree differential between interior and exterior temperatures. I often find myself walking in 95 degree heat wearing a sweatshirt, because I know it's going to be refridgerated inside.

Apparently the 7th floor of North Moody Tower, where the South Dakota girls live, is especially frigid. Lots of people have taken to taping up their air vents in an attempt to find some way of keeping warm. The air conditioning usually proves to be an inevitable force of nature, forcing its way through any man-made barriers. In what I am told is a true symbol of our Institute experience, here is a picture of Netha's "war" on the air vent. She says it makes the room 10 degrees warmer, which is probably just about a comfortable temperature.


I think the duct tape already was already overcome at least once.

Tomorrow is my last day of teaching. On Thursday my students take their final assessment and on Friday I'm having a pizza party. I'm hoping in the next few days to get my hands on a lot of photos of Houston so that I can provide a retrospective of the suffering. I also have a video of one of my classes on Friday, but unfortunately it is burned onto an 8cm DVD, which my computer doesn't read. I'm also not sure that I can legally put up any footage of my students. But if I'm going to see you in person later this summer, and you want to see some fine teaching in action, I can give you glimpse of the magic.