Fall 2025/Spring 2026 Retrospective

Introduction:

As a rising sophomore and chronic MIT student, this is my first foray into the world of blogging. I am filling Vivian’s role as historian (you will be missed!) and I look forward to writing more of these in the future. 

Ice Cream Battle + LMF Party:

Our wonderful Fiona Li used some of our first-year bonding funds to host an ice cream battle! Two sides competed to see who could make the better ice cream using our wonderful new ice cream condenser. Many attended and cast their votes, and Team Hot Pops beat Team Fresh Mints (despite me voting against them). After that, we had fun playing board games with chocolate, fruit, and croissants, where memories were surely made. I was attending a ballroom dance competition at the time, so I wouldn’t know. That’s me in the second picture!

Intramural Sports:

We had a strong Fall sports season. Our delightful Kailyn Gustafson, our sports chair and retired senior, led us to lose all of our soccer matches, but we won something greater: time with each other. Maybe the real goals were the friends we made along the way! In the Spring, we were unable to join the intramural volleyball competition. However, we look forward to a new season next Fall. Harry Potter Menu During the Spring, our great Lamplysha (Alysha Rawji) created the Harry Potter menu! She provided tests all around LMF to help us determine our house, including the official Harry Potter sorting test (inaccurate) and a Harvard researched version (my favorite). For your information, I was found to be equal parts Ravenclaw and Slytherin, at about 60% each. Sadly, I missed this dinner due to another ballroom dance competition, but I had my gardé and ample butterbeer, both of which were quite tasty. We also sorted people into their houses on our white board and discovered that nobody wanted to be Gryffindor.

Goose’s Birthday Party:

Another themed menu, this time by our illustrious Crys Tang (you will be missed). To celebrate the birthday of the handsome Goose, her ferret, she decorated French House’s kitchen with celebratory remarks and ferret decorations. It was a great dinner, and I am glad we all got the chance to celebrate this delightful animal’s continued life! Goose is pictured below.

Lunar New Year:

Our cracked Hilary Chee, a fellow frosh, helped LMF celebrate Lunar New Year through a special menu over IAP! I don’t have much to ramble about here; the food was good, and it was a great way to usher in the Spring semester.

Beach Menu:

Another themed menu! Our talented CCP (Christian Casamajor-Paul) made a delightful beach menu, complete with a very blue pudding decorated with an Oreo crumble beach, sun-tanning sour patch kids, and swimming Swedish fish. People also dressed in beachwear, so the fire our talented CCP accidentally started wasn’t the only hot thing there!

Brock Lee Menu:

The final Brock Lee menu. Our beloved president Teo Lara spent the last 3 years perfecting it, and their dedication showed. We had broccoli pasta, broccoli and butter, broccoli cheese soup, and even broccoli ice cream! We also had fun after dinner cleaning up the decor together.

Fall Retreat:

A very fun trip that I did not go on (surprisingly not because of Ballroom!) Here’s the story from the reconnaissance I did: A group of enterprising LMFers trekked up to Maine for a relaxing weekend of cooking, campfires, ice cream, and nature!

Finals Plague:

In the cold, bleak days of December, the ghost of pestilence found us once again as finals neared. Both Covid and the flu (presumably?) were rampant, and dinner turnout was in dire straits. I miraculously survived it unscathed and have remained well after being here at MIT for over a year! Pictured below is Alysha Rawji, who was one casualty of this period but was revived by the power of ginger tea.

Conclusion:

Vivian left behind big shoes to fill as a dutiful historian and active member of French House. I could try to fill them, but that’s not really what this is about. I will document my new experiences at LMF while learning from the past and help future historians trace my present. I look forward to whatever challenges and opportunities may come, and whatever LMF has in store for next year!

pondering my post-grad orb

 My first blog ever on this site!

Teo’s blogpost reminded me that this awesome site exists, and figured it might be nice to recount some of my own experiences in the House now that I am graduated too– I’m feeling nostalgic with nothing to do at my job so I’ll blog on company time.

When I first told my friend that I lived in French House, they thought I was a weird Francophile 🫩 but now they live in French House too… sooooooo #whatdatmean 🤔 

I joined French House my freshman fall, back in 2022. My first exposure to French House was actually far earlier than that, during CPW, when I crashed in the quiet lounge. I think Fiona ‘24 came in around midnight asking if I was alright (My CPW host lives in Baker– I had no reason to be passed out in that lounge). 

Perhaps that was the first indication of what kind of a place French House was: even a random prefrosh asleep in the quiet lounge is checked on to make sure they’re okay. 

My time in French House often fluctuated; I was more present in some semesters than others, depending on what kind of curveball MIT throws at you. The sweet thing about French House, though, is that it doesn’t matter if you’re gone for two hours or four months. There will always be someone in the hall or the kitchen waiting to ask you how your day has been. 

French House often advertises itself as The Hub of Baking and Cooking at MIT, filled with friendly faces who are always down to join you in whatever you might dream of. 

And to its credit, it’s true. 

What you don’t often get to see is how French House shows up for each other: 

• Rallying in droves to wrap hundreds of stuffed grape leaves hours before you’re even meant to start cooking

• Staying up past midnight to make hundreds of tortillas 

• Cooking dinner every night and pouring your hearts into each meal regardless of whose menu it is

• Showing up to help you cook without any instructions, already knowing what needs to get done

• Dropping off home-baked goods, communal IAP groceries, and boxes and boxes of snacks so you know you always have food at home

• Seeing fudstuds (despite their best efforts not to) work overtime to fulfill every one of your crackpot menus 

• Cheering for your plane as it flies overhead at Johnson track 

• Dreaming up new ways to trick and delude you so that even after four years you’re still surprised when you’re brought before a pitch black kitchen at 10 pm

• Appearing at CPW events even if there’s only one prefrosh present just for it to turn into a house-wide board game night with each other

• Defeating cabin fever by play fighting in the snow

• Babysitting a puppy that hasn’t quite gotten used to being alone yet

• Packing up your entire room in the few hours before you leave 

• Flying across the country to hold each other together

• Going across the hall to hold each other together

Generations of LMFians before me have wandered the same halls I have, and many more will do the same after me. Nothing ever really felt the same from year to year– and I think that’s the point. The community isn’t so much a place as it is the people who make it up; it will grow and change and evolve into something new as the seasons do. Not much will stay the same, I’m sure, but that has always been the most exciting part.

It was and still feels so cliche to say that the best thing about this school is the people you meet here– but cliches persist because they’re true, and this one is no different. French House will show you exactly how a group of thirty-something undergrads can come together and make the east wing on the fourth floor of New House feel like home. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being grateful for that.

Goodbye

Goodbye French House. 

Goodbye to 6:15 à table and menus that are, of course, always on time.

Goodbye to incredibly talented chefs inspiring me to try new things

Goodbye to ice cream flavours as delicious as they are ridiculous

Goodbye to engineers crafting everything from websites to shawarma machines

Goodbye to oddly warped elliptical pans and inevitably unevenly cooked omelettes

Goodbye to athletes who can bike across the continent without breaking a sweat

Goodbye to #quoteboard, may the things written herein never see the light of day.

Goodbye to musicians who are unequivocally better than they pretend to be

Goodbye to bowls on fire alarms to save the kitchen

Goodbye to chess prodigies whose power increases the more glasses they wear

Goodbye to four dozen topperwares with four dozen non-matching lids

Goodbye to academic powerhouses who are already changing the world for the better

Goodbye to wonderfully kooky charts that are more often than not rather problematic.

Goodbye to DnD players fearlessly taking on dragons and krakens

Goodbye to Friday cookteam, my beloved, may your menus continue to be spectacular

Goodbye to the people that I love

Goodbye to everything that made me feel at home

Love and thank you for everything,

Teo A. Lara LMF 2026