Bursting the Baylor Bubble

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I walked around the campus this morning listening to the bells of Pat Neff hall. They were playing a Christmas carol i don't remember the name of.

I saw a really lively squirrel on my travels.

morning tea at ABL
I made my way to Armstrong Browning Library this morning. One of two places that Simon Haines told me i had to visit. The other was the bear enclosure that i saw yesterday. ABL is the most spectacular building on campus. Very, well, magnifcent. But it isn't very old so after a while it occurs to you that everything is a little tacky. Like the 23 1/2 carot gold ceiling in the chapel.

I met the support staff, the librarians and some of the graduate students. Enjoyed hot apple cider. This library would be an amazing place to do research. The Belew scholars room is very comfortable. Leather chairs, beautiful desks.

Dr Prickett meeting
Dr Prickett used to be head of English at ANU. So he enjoyed asking me about everybody.
He told me about some proposals he has in mind that may affect me. Some new programs that might enable me to make more use of my honours and not have to do so much courswork and be able to do more Phd research work. He suggested i do some latin before i arrive and also that i choose French and German as my languages for the Phd program!

Lunch at the Faculty Club

I had lunch today in the Faculty club with Dr Prickett's wife, Patsy and Kathleen, his grad assistant. Lunch at the faculty club is something you can only do in the company of a Faculty member, that is a professor. It was very nice to say the least, but suprisingly inexpensive as i suspect there is heavy subsidisation by the university.

Dr Bellinger had made an appointment with Dr Ralph Wood the day before. Dr Wood had a steady stream of students seeing him. But he spoke with me for an hour. He gave me a number of recent articles of his to read. I really think i would like him to be my supervisor. He is the one where my work most coincides.

After the meeting with Dr Wood i walked back over to Carroll Science where all the english offices are to find the Teaching assistant Office and Mark, a student who was one of the first in the program that i am looking at. While i was talking with him, Evan, another student that i had been emailing arrived. We took an impromptu tour of the libraries ....

...which is where we saw the really weird Christmas decorations - pictures of the white house and the Texas flag and symbols.......

and then along with Evan's wife, Bethany we all went and had dinner at Terriyaki Park - a Japanese restaurant run by Koreans. There were a series of square and rectangle shaped items on the walls covered with Christmas wrapping. Nice decorations. A closer look and you found they were photo frames and cookbooks covered for the holiday season. A little odd but a cheap decorating idea!

The Baylor bubble refers to the phenomena of the undergraduate students at Baylor never having to leave campus to have all that they need. Alot of Waco is really poor but you would never know it from looking at the university. Thus Baylor is a bubble with the wealthy undergraduate living their privleged existence oblivious to the community.

On a less serious note:
Then a discovery of another phenomena that is sweeping the US. free wireless everywhere, especially hotels and airport.....it was a nice discovery.

Bizarre Fact 1001: Baylor Rugby club

…national champions…???
yes i am talking about Rugby Union. Apparently Rugby is gaining popularity and Baylor has a really good club. National Champions 5 years in a row......

The colours of the university are Green and Gold. The pictures of the rugby team make them look like the Wallabies (from a distance only of course).

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Photos

Baylor
The name of the university is in honour of a Governor of Texas, though he was originally from Alabama. He was not present when the Trustees named the university. Apparently they don't know what he looked like so the body is actually a replica of the Lincoln memorial in Washington. Notice how the trees make it look like Autumn. IT was 3 degrees.

Pat Neff Hall
An anonymous donor gave the university the 23 1/2 carot gold dome of Pat Neff Hall which serves as the administration building for the university.

A little Squirrel
I ran into this squirrel walking across campus. pretty cute. He just propped and looked up at me. Perfect timing.

Old buildings.
The oldest bilding on campus. It used to be a women's only Dormitory. The men referred to it as the promised land. Built in 1865.

Bears
The Baylor Gym has a rock climbing wall in the shape of a Bear!

Stained Glass_1
The Stained Glass at the Armstrong Browning Library is beautiful. Each panel relates to the poetry of Robert Browning or his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning with verses from the poetry adorning some of the panels.

Treasure Room_1
The Treasure room at the Armstrong Browning Library is impressive. Filled with artifacts, paintings, and furniture that is period or supposed to look like it is. The room housed the Lewis, Macdonald and Nesbit exhibition.

The ABL main room
This is a room in the ABL where anyone on campus can come to study. What a lovely place to work.

Stained Glass_2
Only three windows in the entire building are not stained glass and they are working on changing that!

Real Bears
Joy and Lady are the mascots for Baylor.

More Bears
Their purpose built facility is brand new. They attend football games. Lady and Joy are named after wives of former President's of the university.

Christmas Decorations Texas style
Christmas decorations in the form of the Capital building and various Texan symbols.

Doors to the castle
The doors of the ABL are art. Being Bronze they are very heavy though it is the relief on them that is really impressive. Scenes from the old Testament and particularly the reign on King David adorn their patinaed surface.

Roof of the chapel
The ABL chapel roof is covered with 23 1/2 carot gold on the inside (noticing a pattern here?). Very magnificent and vaguely tacky.

Window Dressing
Most of the Residential buildings on the campus are quite old (at least 100 years). This is the picture of some windows of a female dormitory building. What struck me was the detail and the quality of the workmanship.