This is my Remembrance page about my University dorm from 99-01.
Credits:
Treasured - The Places - TLP Collab
Hello Happy template - Lynn Grieveson
670 words:
My second year of college I headed to the big city of Edmonton. I did my first year at home at Red Deer College, and then had to transfer to the University of Alberta because RDC didn’t have as many French options, and at that time French was still my major (I didn’t change it to Sociology until 3rd year). I took some tours of the different options they had for student housing, visiting both Lister Hall with a high school friend, Candace, and the Faculte St. Jean Residence with my mom’s friend’s daughter, Carrie, who lived there at the time. Lister Hall just seemed like such a big place, and I wasn’t too sure about the food plan. I am definitely not a gourmet cook but I am definitely a picky eater and I had already gained the Freshman 50 so I didn’t know if I really wanted to be stuck eating Cafeteria food all the time. I loved the atmosphere of Rez, as it became known to me. The building was old and cranky, and oh SO hot with the hot water radiators that heated the place. I lived on the second floor, and I paid more for my rent to get a single room - so it was smaller but I didn’t have to share. The kitchens and bathrooms were communal - and at the time I was so shocked that the bathrooms were both Co-Ed and shared. My room was right next to the bathroom which I remember being worried about but it turned into a non-issue. There were 3 floors to Rez, plus the basement, and each floor had its own Kitchen. We were issued cupboards and space in the fridge and freezer, to share. The cupboards locked, but there weren't many times I actually locked mine. I kept most of my dry good foods in my room, and I had a little bar fridge that I stored things in because the space in the fridge was pretty tight. One of the funniest things was that if you left your dishes out they were collected each night and put on the front deck by the Res Life Assistants (RLA’s). There were rumors that Rez was haunted, with the ghost of Frere Antoine. I really wish I had written down that story, because now I don’t remember what that was all about - just that there was a washroom in the basement that only locked from the inside and it kept getting locked, and Frere Antoine was to blame. At the ‘Fac’ or ‘Rez’ as we called it you had to speak French - the only time you could speak English was in your room with the door closed. If you got caught speaking English you would get a warning (avertissement), and supposedly 3 warnings and you were out. I remember the parties ‘La Taniere’ - including a toga party and a few pot lucks! In my 3rd year of Uni (second year at Rez) they started building a new building because the old building really did need a lot of work. In the spring we finally got to move into the new building, and I stayed there through the following year when I graduated. It was great because it was brand new, and each room had a bathroom in it (fancy!) but it had some quirks too - if too much weight was in the shower it would start to leak into the room below … causing the warning to go out to not have more than one person in the shower, and the jokes would follow of course when yet another shower started leaking and the activities that must have happened in that shower to get it to leak. Most of my great memories from Rez and University surround the people that I met and were friends with, but that one building sure does hold a lot of sentimental value for me - it was my first home away from home, and the first time I was really responsible for myself.
