This School Trumps My School

Not gonna lie...Pittsburgh has yet to impress me.  The city is kind of eh; the weather is bleh; the food is meh.  However, the Cathedral of Learning erased all of this from my mind.  What is the Cathedral of Learning?  Basically it's a part of the University of Pittsburgh--students have classes there--but way cooler than anything I've seen on a college campus.  Basically different countries have funded classrooms in the building and designed them based on the specific country.  Here is an example: the Israel Room.

It's a classroom!  A classroom!  Amazing.  Each room has different seating, windows, lighting, designs, and (this is the best) hidden chalkboards.  Here I am pretending to write on the one in the Chinese Room.

The rooms were so beautiful, they made me want to go to class.  If I went to school here, I would study all the time and pay attention in class, and never want to leave.  Well, I say that now, but that would probably change in a few weeks.

Maybe my mind would wander more because I would just be daydreaming about how cool these rooms are...and I would be writing stories that take place in other countries...*sigh*

And they're still adding more rooms!  I hope I can come back some day and see the rooms we didn't get to go in (some had classes in session) and the new ones.  See this ceiling?  It was hand-painted and took over seven months to complete!

This is the English Room.  It was the largest room we saw and it reminded me of pictures I saw of St. John's at Cambridge.  It just made me super excited for grad school; I hope at least some of my classrooms look like this.  How perfect!

This is the Armenian Room.  It reminded me of an old castle where princes and princesses would be tutored in Latin and mathematics.  

The Greek Room was so picturesque but my picture of it was a little dark.  Alas.  This one turned out nicely.

The main part of the first floor was this great hall that reminded me of Hogwarts' Great Hall.  I wished I could be one of the students reading and writing at the cute little tables.  It was beyond gorgeous.  I really, really hope St. John's looks like this (pictures are convincing me it does!).  So, okay, Pittsburgh...you've got some stunning places.  But this was definitely a well-kept secret.  If you ever go to Pittsburgh, this is a must-see.  And the best part?  It's free!