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Hi.

Welcome to This Awful/Awesome Life! My name is Frances Joyce. I am the publisher and editor of this magazine. We'll be exploring different topics each month to inform, entertain and inspire you. Meet new authors, sharpen your brain and pick up a few tips on life, love, entertaining and business. Enjoy and please share!

The Nationality Rooms at Pitt by Fran Joyce

All of us who work on This Awful Awesome Life are extremely proud to be able to reach an international audience and we try to include articles about people, cultures, foods, and landmarks from around the world. Lilly suggested we highlight the wonderful resource for diversity and inclusion that’s right on our doorstop and I’m so glad she did.

Now in its 30th year, the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs 2021 Holiday Open House at the University of Pittsburgh takes place from December 5 to December 12. You can enjoy a virtual visit through all 31 Nationality Rooms while listening to Pitt’s Quo Vadis guide reveal special architectural features and interesting facts about each room.

Find out how much you know about Greek Christmas Trivia during the Greek Christmas Trivia Weekend and watch a performance by the Scottish Balmoral Pipes and Drum Band.

Learn to make your own Romanian Sorcovas. Sorcova is a Romanian tradition that takes place on the morning of January 1. It is also the name used to describe the object that characterizes this custom. Children decorate a stick or branch with paper or artificial flowers of different colors and gently tap their parents or acquaintances on the back with it on the morning of January 1. Then the children wish them health and luck in special verses while pointing the Sorcova toward them as if it were a magic wand.

During the Holiday Open House, you will also learn about the holiday traditions, food, and stories from countries around the world.

The 31 Nationality Rooms are gifts to the University of Pittsburgh from the ethnic communities that helped build the city of Pittsburgh and reflect the cultural heritages of these communities. The idea originated in 1926 when ground was broken for the construction of the 42-story gothic-style Cathedral of Learning. The original 19 rooms encircling the first floor Common Room were completed between 1938 and 1957. The remaining 12 rooms were completed after 1987. The design style of each room predates the signing of the U.S. Constitution and the founding of the University of Pittsburgh in 1787. Political and religious items as well as portraits or references to any living person do not appear in any of the rooms. The architectural design and the contents included in each room were based on designs from international architects, artists, designers, and craftspeople with the vision they be functional, educational, and aesthetically pleasing. The rooms are used as classrooms almost every day of the week.

The 31 Nationality Rooms include:

African Heritage Room             

Korean Heritage Room

Armenian Room                          

Lithuanian Room

Austrian Room                             

Norwegian Room

Chinese Room                           

Philippine Room

Czechoslovak Room                

Polish Room

Early American Room              

Romanian Room

English Room                             

Russian Room

French Room                              

Scottish Room

German Room                           

Swedish Room

Greek Room                               

Swiss Room

Hungarian Room                       

Syria-Lebanon Room

Indian Room                               

Turkish Room

Irish Room                                   

Ukrainian Room

Israel Heritage Room               

Welsh Room

Italian Room                               

Yugoslav Room

Japanese Room

For More information about this year’s virtual Holiday Open House, please visit:

https://pi.tt/NRIEPHolidayOpenHouse.

To see more images of the Nationality Rooms, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationality_Rooms

Sources for this article:

https://www.nationalityrooms.pitt.edu/

Images used:

Logo: By The logo is from the following website: http://www.communications.pitt.edu/Graphic-Standards.pdf http://www.chancellor.pitt.edu/publications/2009-Annual-Report.pdf, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33333619

The Cathedral of Learning: By Notyourbroom - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8377753

Indian Room: By Crazypaco - Own work by uploader, photo by Michael G. White, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4934505

African Heritage Room: By Karen Blaha from Charlottesville, VA - Cathedral of Learning African Heritage Classroom, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41543384

 

December 2021 in This Awful Awesome Life

The Soup-go-Round by Lilly Kauffman