Sunday, May 22, 2005

How to contribute

If you’d like to contribute a story to this site, simply e-mail your text to krishiqua.foreignlanguagehouse@blogger.com and it will appear automatically!

If you have pictures you’d like to contribute, please send them to krishiqua@planet.nl and I will gladly post them for you.

You are also welcome to leave an anonymous comment on the various photos and articles.

And an important clarification, this blog is meant for ALL residents of the FLH during any period. You didn’t have to know me to contribute!

Warm regards,

Christopher

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Russian Dance


Scot getting a well-deserved slap at a Russian dance demonstration. :-) It's actually part of the dance.

Russian Festival


A group of dancers at the Russian Festival (forget the name).

Oktoberfest Homecoming Float


Doug, Jolene, Eric and others preparing the FLH Oktoberfest float for the U of I homecoming parade.

Mardi Gras


Scot Stephenson and partner dancing at Mardi Gras.

Oktoberfest


Scot Stephenson and Jolene (?) at Oktoberfest. Scott is sporting a t-shirt from the Concordia Language Villages where several of us spent our summers teaching and/or learning foreign languages.


More kids at Gusto Latino

Gusto Latino Piñata


Scott Stephenson teaching a young participant at Gusto Latino how to break a piñata.

What the FLH meant to me - by Christopher

I moved in to South Quad my freshman year. I’d been looking forward to going to a private school, but at the very last minute, my parents decided they couldn’t afford it, and I was one of those typical cases where my parents made too much money for me to be eligible for any financial aid. So the U of I was the only other possibility. And I was pretty sure it would suck. That it would be a large, impersonal, un-navigable bureaucracy where I would be nothing more than a student number in a large industrial meat grinder. For the most part, I was correct. But the one thing that turned it all around and made it the very best five and a half years of my life was the Foreign Language House.

From they day I moved it, it felt like home. I got pretty damn lucky the first year with my first roommate Tad. Though from smalltown Manchester and a military guy, he never gave me any trouble about being gay and was a considerate and kind guy. Though he probably thought I was one of the strangest creatures he’d ever met. Subsequent years would see me paired with an old high school classmate, Paul Schultz, who became and fantastic and supportive friend who I still have occasional contact with today. After a short semester with a third roommate junior year showed us to be incompatible, my remaining time in the FLH was in the coveted single rooms.

South Quad was a fantastic place. Relatively self-contained, with the exception of the student-run radio station in the basement, it had the fantastic feature that the main entrance ran through the communal lounge, meaning you could see and say hello to everyone who was coming or going. And the lounge had people in at almost any hour of the day or night. The closest thing we had to that in later years was the “Vortex” of Hillcrest, which was nothing more than a place three hallways met at an access. Even then, people tended to congregate there sitting on the floor and talking at all hours of the day and night. We would get together and watch our favorite TV shows (Star Trek: The Next Generation garnered the biggest audiences, especially the first season), but most importantly it was a place where we could learn and practice our many and varied foreign languages almost 24 hours a day. In practice, I think we spoke mostly English (with the exception of the weekly “House Dinners”) because of the mix of so many different languages in the house, but it was nice to be able to bump into someone at least once a day that I could practice Spanish, French, Japanese or German with (the languages I was studying at the time).

In short, the FLH was more or less a big co-ed fraternity/sorority that gave me friends, comrades, big brothers and sisters (and later little brothers and sisters) to help me navigate the complexities of early adult life and the university. I will always remember it as one of the most important experiences of my life. Indeed, it gave me the international orientation that motivated me to study for a year in Spain, and left me feeling well-prepared for a temporary job assignment overseas that eventually became permanent. And I fell that I’m far better prepared for working in a company with 31 different nationalities and customers all over the world because of my FLH experience. So thanks to the U of I for supporting it (albeit sometimes begrudgingly, it seemed) and for all of you who were such a wonderful part of my experience there! Hope we can stay in touch over the years!

1988-89 Group Photo


A bit more sedate version of the 1988-89 photo. We dressed up like "dumb American tourists".

1988-89 Group Photo (Crazy Version)


The FLH's first year in Hillcrest.

1987-88 Group Photo


The last year spent in South Quad before the Universty relocated the FLH to Hillcrest. We all believed it would be the demise of the FLH, but it continued to thrive and survive for some time after that. But it was nothing like having our own "house" with a central lounge that everyone had to walk through on their way in and out of the building. That really created a "family" atmosphere.

"The Vortex" - Many Voices, One Song


A scene from "The Vortex" in Hillcrest. You could find someone there at almost any hour of the day or night. The entire hall was painted with the murals, slogans and flags you see in the backround (based on a lot of hard work by a lot of people!), which have since been painted over to bring the floor back to its formal sterile glory.

The Boys of FLH


Some people thought that FLH stood for "Fags Live Here". It was always a very tolerant space for gay and lesbian residents, and made it much easier for many of us to come out.

Welcome FLH Graduates!

Mardi Gras, Oktoberfest, Gusto Latino, Omatsuri. Late nights sitting in the "Vortex" of Hillcrest eating french bread and brie, or watching the first season of ST:TNG in the lounge of South Quad with 40 people. Your first year away from home. A chance to meet and live with other people with similar interests and goals. The Foreign Language House was a lot of things to a lot of people over the years, many of whom (like me) lived there for four years or even more.

Nevertheless, there seems to be shockingly little about this special place on the Internet. So I'd like to make this a place where we can all tell stories about our experiences living in the FLH.

Just e-mail your stories to krishiqua.foreignlanguagehouse@blogger.com, and they will automatically be posted to the site. If you have photos you'd like to share, please send them to krishiqua@me.com and I will be happy to post them for you! You can also COMMENT on all the postings and photos on the site as well.