"Support our Terps."

Yesterday afternoon I finished the National Gallery of Art and then came home exhausted and famished. But I did see some cool stuff, including (over the course of my 2 days there) works by Renoir, Picasso, Monet, Degas, Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Rothko, O'Keefe, Pollock, and the large Campbell's Soup painting by that guy who's name I forget. An excellent gallery: you should go if you're ever in DC.

Today---Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the U.S.A.---I took the subway out to Prince George's Plaza for some grocery shopping, and then took a long walk around the University of Maryland. Wow. Such a huge campus, and with such amazingly enormous red brick buildings. The university just celebrated it's 150th anniversary (1856-2006), and the school teams are known as the Terrapins . . . or Terps for short. And, because EC wanted pictures, here are some that I took to document my travels.

First up, some examples of the architecture. Please note that I am not a photographer, so don't expect artistic composition!

And here's a last one that I took of a window on the Ritchie Coliseum:
Did you notice how the buildings are all very similar? And also that there's no snow here? That's right. We've hardly had any proper winter at all yet, despite the fact that it's now the middle of January. Today it was supposed to be 21 celcius. I even had to take my jacket off when I was strolling through campus.

Speaking of campus (again), there's really something about space and place that makes a big difference on these sprawling grounds. It's very impressive. For example, here's a (admittedly sad-looking right now) Greek memorial of some sort right in the middle part of the huge mall that leads up to the main library. The memorial features a MLK, Jr. quotation on the bottom right of the picture.

And this is a walkway alongside said mall. Imagine walking up this every day?
There were very few other people around since the students are still on break. I also walked past more than a dozen Greek houses, and they are enormous and mostly impressive looking too.

Oh, but the oddest things were seeing a building named "Armoury" with two cannons out front, and this bird. What is it?!