Well here I am in lovely New Haven with S. She has been an excellent tour guide, and on Monday we explored Yale.
"We who must live salute you who have found the strength to die" - an inscription in Memorial Hall with inscriptions of soldiers in all wars since the Revolutionary War.
I loved seeing inside of the Beinecke Library, it was super cool to have in front of my own eyes one of the original Gutenberg Bibles (created in the 1450s!!) and the beginning of the age of the printed book in the West! So much was to follow!
Then S took me to see specimens of brains in the Harvey Cushing center. I won't make you look at those photos, but it was funky and inspiring - medicine has come so far! The photo of Sarah under the tree is a little patio where she used to eat lunch when she was still in classes. Now she's all day in the hospital!
After eating a burger at Shake Shack (they claim it is better than In-n-Out, I have to admit it was good, but I don't think they've beat out animal style) we took an official Yale tour. Our guide is an actor and a singer, and it seemed like he dressed up to look just like a classic preppy Yale student (rugby stripes, Yale ball cap, mustard pants) haha. We learned a lot, though! We started out at the New Haven Green, and learned that apparently frisbees were invented at Yale by students throwing pie tins...
Anyway, where you see students messing around with fake swords is called cross-campus, where the Freshman live. It is soooo gorgeous! Also, very weird to think that Presidents have lived there.
Then we went to where sophomores and upper-classmen live, in what they call colleges (kind of like Hogwarts houses). A Yale alumnus actually did a lot of the architecture way back in the day and built things to look older than they were. He even buried the shingles at different pH levels in the ocean to give them an older look, and purposefully broke window panes. It worked. It looks a bit like Cambridge and is absolutely enchanting.
I might seem a little starstruck by the Ivy League-ness of it all, which I am. The architect I mentioned earlier wanted to build a cathedral, but Yale didn't need one so he made the library a cathedral to knowledge. Their motto is lux et veritas - light and truth. What is there not to be starstruck about? Haha. There's one motto I like a little better, though... Enter to learn, go forth to serve ;)
