The Intercultural Center (or the IC) is a great study spot and an even greater hang-out spot. It’s got comfy couches and chairs, some soft stuffed animals, a fireplace, and one of my favorite places on campus—the IC kitchen!
You heard me right. The IC has a kitchen—and it’s free for anyone to use (as long as you provide your own ingredients). It even has the cookware you need to make any dishes that you want. My friends and I love this kitchen! We’ve used it plenty of times. Some of my favorite memories come from our times spent in the IC kitchen. One of them happened during fall break.
I was still on campus, along with most of my friends, and we were getting a little restless, a little homesick. So, we decided to watch “One Day at a Time”—which is a very good show on Netflix, I highly recommend. But, it still didn’t chase those feelings away. We got to talking and the conversation quickly turned to food, especially food we would eat back home. We started listing them off—beans and rice, enchiladas, homemade tortillas, etc.. While we were going through them, my roommate popped up and yelled, “Tamales!” We all agreed with her and she cut us off once again.
“No you guys, let’s make tamales! I have a big pot and we can get ingredients at Giant!” She explained.
As our friend group often does, we all collectively oh-ed and were on board with her plan. That day, we played rock-paper-scissors to see who was on grocery duty (I was one of them), got an Uber, and went on our merry way to the grocery store. After returning to campus, with ingredients in tow, I texted the group chat and told them tomorrow would be our big tamale dinner.
The next day, we all met in my room, grabbed our groceries, and excitedly made our way to the IC! We prepped all of our ingredients and got to it. While we were waiting for our tamales to cook, some of us did homework, but that didn’t last long. That same day there was a soccer game going on. One of our friends is on the team and we wanted to support him—as we’ve done for every single one of his games. We frantically texted people asking if they had an HDMI cord. Eventually, we got lucky. Once we got the cord, we connected one of our laptops to the TV and found the link to the soccer game.
While the game was going and we were getting rowdier by the second, I guess it caught some other people’s attention. Some upperclassmen came into the kitchen and saw us watching the game. We told them that we were waiting on tamales and watching our friend play, and to our surprise, they joined us. Our energy infected them and soon, they were just as loud as we were—yelling, groaning, and cheering as if we could be heard through the screen.
The tamales were ready just before half time. We all crowded around the table, ready to try the food we had all made together. To say the least, they were delicious! After some fulfilling tamales, we all talked with the upperclassmen and got to know each other a little better. Soon, the game started again and we were back to being cheerleaders, including our new friends. After watching the Garnet win, we cleaned up, packed up what little leftovers we had, and said bye to each other, eager for a new adventure the next day.
