Pictures from Brownsville/South Padre Island

Short picture descriptions, starting from upper left. Click on a picture to get a larger image.

1. A view from my hotel window. At spring break, the beach would be buried in college students!
2. ...and apparently some of those students like to have fun in elevators.
3. The UT Brownsville campus, which looks modern because it dates from only 1991.
4. The DNA column at the UTB biology department.
5. Lots of good birding at the north end of the island...
6. ...but also a 9 foot long alligator. Doug, are you paying attention? :)
7. A few examples of birds. This is a common moorhen.
8. Juvenile great blue heron.
9. Tri-color heron.
10. Some of the students at the gravitational wave summer school, enjoying the outside.
11. At the facility where we had the classes there were lots of barn swallow nests. Here we have a nest as it was at the beginning.
12. This is the nest a week later.
13. And this is the nest the day before the babies all flew out!
14. Several of us at a birthday party. From left: Martha Casquette (the birthday girl, and administrative organizer of the summer school), me, Manuela Campenelli (assistant professor at UTB, and scientific organizer), Rick Jenet (most recently hired prof), Carlos Lousto (associate professor, and Manuela's husband), Ariel Martinez (system administrator), and Peter Saulson (professor at Syracuse, and one of the other lecturers).
15. Peter Saulson discussing instrumentation.
16. Miguel Alcubierre (professor at UNAM, Mexico) telling us about numerical relativity.
17. Curt Cutler (AEI, Potsdam, but moving to JPL) explaining data analysis.
18. Me with Sherry Suyu, my TA. She is a graduate student at Caltech, working with Roger Blandford.
19. The students listening attentively.
20. Sherry and Ilya Mandel, her main squeeze and also a student at Caltech, working with Kip Thorne. Ilya also turns out to be a talented poet.
21. Three views of the area. Here we have the entrance to the classroom...
22. ...the outside of the building (Texas Southmost College is a community college that shares ground with UTB, and has existed since the 1920s)...
23. ...and where we ate most of our lunches. It was important to distinguish between the food and the bait!
24. Texas skies, on the way back.

Brownsville