Last night, Mark and I headed over to North Quad

for some soccer and frisbee in the courtyard.  Ian is currently training as a community assistant there, and—as you would expect from Ian—he immediately introduced us to what seemed to be the entire group of CA’s and RA’s.  After trading a few greetings, frisbee passes, and stories about European volcanoes, the insects came out, and it was time to head in.  For a personal tour.  Through the “not open to the public” doors =)

As expected, North Quad is really nice—but maybe not for the reasons we expected.  I don’t know about you, but with all its hype, I had envisioned plasma TV’s in every room, luxurious couches in every lounge, maybe even some moving staircases and secret rooms for times of great need.  The truth is, though, that most of that was left out.  Sure, there are still plasma TV’s in almost every room, but the couches are simple and sleek.  Most of the rooms are not overly grand, and the elevators don’t even work sometimes.

Instead, North Quad focuses much more on developing community and cultural awareness.  The building has no front desk but rather a community center lounge.  Centrally controlled monitors, providing information about all kinds of North Quad activities, can be found almost anywhere within the building.  There is an enormous tower room for hosting community events, and there is a room where residents can make voice calls to any country in the world.  The lounges even contain trilingual trash cans.  They even have “freaky German” chairs… which are interesting. 

One thing has been bothering me recently, though.  If we would have turned on any of those numerous plasma TV’s, we probably would have seen a large number of reports about cultural misunderstandings and misled hostility.  It seems to be everywhere these days.  Even our president is wrongly accused and well… yeah.  It just makes us wonder what people are doing out there.  Are they listening with an open mind? Or are they just listening for what they want to hear?

Either way, one thing is certain: North Quad is on pace for the former.  And gazing across the city from the tenth floor tower room, we can hope that the rest of the country will soon follow.