My brother was one of the jurors in the Engineering Division of this year's Solar Decathalon held in DC this past week.
20 teams from colleges and universities around the world built a "solar village" on the National Mall in DC to compete to see who could design, build and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar-powered house.
The team from Darmstadt, Germany won first prize, but our own University of Maryland came in second! Way to go Terrapins!
The primary sponsor of the Decathalon is the US Department of Energy. My brother sat right behind the Secretary of Energy at the awards ceremony on Friday.
On Thursday evening, when my brother was having dinner at his hotel with some colleagues, the Dalai Lama and three other monks breezed through the lobby and went up the elevator! Apparently, they had toured some of the solar homes that day, and his Holiness was in town to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor from Bush earlier in the week.
