A huge Christmas tree is still up in the Great Hall, there are still Christmas wreathes everywhere, and the entryway of ISH is still draped with Christmas lights. We’re almost at the end of those drowsy days between Christmas and the New Year, a time for quiet self-reflection and contemplation. This pensiveness, I believe, is about 65% due to the proliferation of year-round-up listicles in all forms of media. Jumping on this bandwagon, I’ve rounded some of my favorite moments at ISH.
The Halloween Party
This was the first time I dressed up for Halloween! My costume was a last minute cobbled together attempt at something resembling a unicorn, but my housemates had far more elaborate interpretations. My favorites included a pretty convincing Bob Ross, a very ingenious Don Lockwood from Singin’ in the Rain, and a wonderfully creative interpretation of “When Life Gives You Lemons”. (Katie wore a name tag that said “Life”, and actually gave out lemons from a basket that she carried around). All around just a fun night with friends.
Anytime the kitchen serves meatballs. Or lasagna. Or double chocolate chip cookies.
I haven’t written much about food, but it was definitely one of the things I worried about going in. If you’ve never visited ISH before, we have a dining hall where we eat our meals. For dinner, there are usually a variety of hot options, some form of dessert (cakes, cookies, or puddings), and a salad bar. (We also have Fish Fridays and Meatless Mondays, for different reasons, but that’s a whole other article.) It’s always nice not to have to worry about cooking dinner after a whole day at work, but I like meatballs and lasagna because they’re very reliable options.
Quiz time at Africa Night
I might have written about this before, but the Africa Night organizing committee went high tech and created an interactive quiz for us to test our knowledge about Africa, that we could access on our phones. Specifically, I remember when, in a moment of utter stupidity, I got the capital of South Africa wrong. Because my friend Tebogo (who is from South Africa) scoffed very loudly from second-hand embarrassment and said that we couldn’t be friends anymore. (South Africa actually has three capitals, Pretoria, Bloemfontein and Cape Town. I had managed to pick the only wrong answer). She was joking, and we are still friends. I like to think about that moment because I think learned a lot about that night.
The second snow day of 2019
Before I moved into ISH I actually spent a short time living in an apartment nearby. It was fine, but I always hated it when the office closed because I’d be stuck at home with nothing to do. Snow days at ISH were different- and there were many, as I was surprised to find, because DC shuts down with the slightest snow fall. The second snow day of the year was actually my favorite, because most of us found out before hand that we wouldn’t have work/ school the next day. What followed was a very late night playing Pictionary, charades, and even with some play dough that we found around the house. The next day some of us studied together in the Great Hall, interspersed with short breaks to venture outside for lunch and snowball fights. We ended the night with a jam session in the hall. A boring, ordinary snow day, doing fairly normal things, but somehow my mind goes back to that day a lot.
And these are all just moments that happened in ISH. I have many other amazing memories that happened because of ISH. This includes meeting all the people I met through other ISH residents that I otherwise would never have met otherwise. (Shout out here to the very friendly students of the Asan Academy.)
Here’s to another exciting year!
