The Bouch. And the Non-Magical Moody Towers.

Hahaha! Ahh...the bouch is finally funny. I really thought this day would never come.

The bouch is the bed of choice in the University of Houston’s Moody Towers. I thought Moody Towers sounded like a mystical, magical place (a la Professor Moody in Harry Potter). I never anticipated just how wrong I could have been.

I lived on the 14th floor. Generally, we could count on maybe one of the two elevators working at any given time (I got stuck only once). But this meant long lines to get upstairs (sometimes a half an hour!) and sore buns after getting impatient and ambitiously trekking up the stairs with all our teacher gear.

So the room: I slept on a bouch, pictured above. It’s not quite a bed and not quite a couch. You pull the mattress out about 6 more inches when you want to sleep. This frees up about an inch and a half more mattress space, and opens a wide, frightening abyss into the unknown beneath the bouch. I never, ever, ever even looked down there, let alone touched anything down there. Some people had inexplicable stains in their rooms – I wasn’t taking any chances.

The mattress was made in a jail - "Texas Correctional Industries." It was not comfortable. My roommate and I wondered when they would feel comfortable – it took about two nights of three hours of sleep and I found myself dreaming of my bouch during the day. It did the job.

The windows in the room were about a foot wide and five feet tall - they were slivers of the outside world during Institute. However, it seemed like whenever I was in the room it was always dark.

But, for this blog, I am focusing on bringing out the “highs,” the positives of my experiences here in Houston. So, after much deliberation, I think that my high for Moody Towers was the camaraderie amid chaos. Just walking through the doors into the Commons, there would be (what seemed like) hundreds of people, just like me, stressed out, tired, frustrated, failing, and they were all right there alongside me. I don’t think I could have made it through Institute if I wasn’t constantly surrounded by the energy and determination of all the other corps members training in Houston. I met some really fantastic people, especially the 99 of us who had to catch the earliest school bus (6:20) every morning to trek to Sharpstown. I never thought I would say I missed anything about Institute or Moody Towers, but I really do miss the people. So that’s my high!