New friends Brownie, White Girl, Krystal and Gustav

Sunday, August 31, 2008
I am really enjoying my stay at Psi Psi. These girls are fantastic! I get along with all of them really well and they’re taking really good care of me. The girls I spend most of my time with are Krystal, Cassie, Whitney and Diane. I wish I lived here and really got to hang out with these girls all the time. I fit so well with them. Krystal is my favorite though. Somehow she’s ended up being the one I call when I’m stranded or have nothing to do and just want someone to hang out with. She’s effing awesome. We just kind of bonded immediately. I wish I could adopt her as my little sister. We can talk easily about anything, joke with each other without hurting each others feelings and think a lot of the same things. We also got some guinea pigs together! They’re evacuees from New Orleans and they’re names are Brownie and White Girl (named by the black woman we got them from, not by us). We have to bathe them tonight because they smell horrible. I also have ended up staying here (Krystal, Cassie and Diane’s house) the last few nights instead of at their advisors house and shacking up with Krystal. We’re all secretly hoping that I get stranded here for a few extra days because of the hurricane. They’re even trying to talk me into coming to visit in December, not as their LC but just as their friend because I get along with them all so well. It’s really great because I have a ton of fun hanging out with them, but when it’s time to get down to business, they still listen to me and respect me.

Speaking of hurricane, Gustav is headed our way and it doesn’t look like he’s going to have any mercy on us. It was a category 4 this morning but has since dropped down to a category 3. Katrina tore Louisiana up when she it and she was only a category 2. People from lower LA are evacuating and taking over Natchitoches. If it gets too bad we may even have to evacuate from here. I’m not excited that the hurricane is coming and people have to evacuate and might lose their homes, but I am excited that since it is coming, I’m here to experience it! I think it’s exciting and I’ve never really experienced something like this. Also, we’ve been having a lot of trouble with cell phone service here, so if you try and get a hold of me over the next few days and can’t, don’t freak out OR get mad. Be patient and I’ll get back to you.

Tomorrow (weather permitting) we are gong to the alligator park or alligator gardens or something. I’m excited. I have no idea what that is, but I’m sure it’s great! I’m really glad that I still have a week here. Because this chapter is SO great, I’m a little worried that my next chapter is going to be awful just to balance it out. I hope that’s not the case. I also have a lot of shit that I need to do to prepare for my next visit. I have a lot of people that I need to call and reports to get ready for and all kinds of stuff. I hope that I’m able to get it all done.

This is Whitney, Krystal and I looking hot in the Goodwill in Natchitoches

This is Whitney, Diane and I looking... ridiculous

This is Krystal and Diane holding me and Krystal's new pets :)

The responsible response

Wednesday, August 27, 2008
I love my job! And I love the girls from this chapter. They are super sweet and fun and I just wish I could stay here all year long and be their personal LC. They’re all at a party right now and they tried very hard to get me to go with them, but that’s not really appropriate. They assured me that I didn’t have to drink with them and promised not to take any pictures with me so I wouldn’t get caught but I still declined. Way to go me for being responsible. I might go out with them this weekend though. The party tonight was a fraternity party but this weekend they’re going to a concert at a local pub. I think that’s a bit different since only girls who are 21 can go and it’s not affiliated with the school or Greek life at all. I still don’t plan on drinking with them (it’s not against the rules for us to do so, but it’s recommended that we don’t).

I am really excited! I found out tonight that ASA has decided to expand at Texas A&M in Kingsville in the spring. That’s in district 7, one of the districts that I’m working with, so I think that I’m going to be in charge of it! I should find out for sure tomorrow when I have my conference call with Amber. I don’t know yet if they already have an interest group or a local sorority set up or if we’ll be starting from scratch there the same way we did at Clayton state. It’s exciting either way, even if it’s not me that get’s to go! That’ll be possibly 3 colonies we get to install as chapters in the 2008 year!

I found out today that the campus I’m on now has decided to let me use the wireless internet on campus while I’m visiting, so I’m going tomorrow morning to get that all set up. It’ll be nice to get to use my own computer to do things and not have to pretend to be the chapter president and use the computer lab on campus. I don’t really have a whole lot going on in my life now that I’m on the road. My days (and nights for that matter) consist of hanging out with the chapter girls, mostly in meetings. I think we’ve got some fun things planned for this weekend and they don’t have school on Monday, so hopefully I’ll have something more fun to write about then.

I talked to Miss Nicole on the phone for 45 minutes tonight! I’m so proud of myself since I’m not that big of a phone person. The only people I usually talk to on the phone are John, and occasionally Hannah and Elaine. And now that John has run off to India I don’t imagine I’ll be doing much of that with him anymore. I’m really glad that Nicole and I did end up building a friendship, but talking to her made me sad. She’s still in GA until Sunday and the AKL guys are all still there and now they’re staying in the same hotel as Nicole. I’ve also become pretty good friends with one of the guys (Corey) and between emailing back and forth with him and talking to Nicole, I’m bummed that they’re all there getting to hang out and I’m here without them. Every time I call Nicole she puts me on speaker phone and they all yell hello. It’s nice to feel missed. And I am thoroughly enjoying my time here, so I guess it could be worse. I’m really looking forward to my vacation in October! It’s still more than a month away, but it’s starting to get closer and I know that I’m going to be DYING to see my friends and family by the time it rolls around.

I’m starting to struggle with eating healthy now that I have to depend on the chapter women to feed me. They’re constantly taking me out to eat and not at very healthy places so I’m struggling with ordering healthy things and with portion control. I’m going to try and start doing better with that tomorrow though. We’ll see how it goes!

Psi Psi. Sigh...

Monday, August 25, 2008
Today was such a long day! Jenn and I met with all of the members of Psi Psi to talk about how they felt about their membership in ASA and their views of the chapter. It was really nice getting to meet with all of the women and I really like them all a lot! They have 9 girl in the chapter (one more than I originally thought) and they are all strong, dedicated members that I think will make this chapter amazing! I’m so excited!

After we had all of our meetings today, the girls called invited me to go out to ice cream with them. One of the girls is going to school on a different campus (same school, just different campus) so she’s not around much during the week, so there’s 8 girls who are normally around. They said they all wanted to just hang out with me and get to know me more, so we went and sat at McDonalds for like an hour. I found out that they all wanted to hang out with me this weekend, but every time they called Betsy to see if I was available to go to dinner with them or something, Betsy would tell them I was already busy without even asking me if I was interested. I would have loved to have gotten to know the girls before my first big meeting with them; it would have made the whole thing less awkward for them and for me. I really do like this chapter a lot. All of the girls are super sweet and fun. They have all offered to let me come and stay with them if I don’t want to stay with Betsy for the rest of my visit and for when I come and visit next time. I don’t want to hurt Betsy’s feelings this time so I think I’m just going to go ahead and stay here the rest of this visit, but next time I’d definitely like to stay with one of the chapter girls! They also invited me to come back and visit them in December (not as an LC, but just as a sister) because Natchitoches is apparently gorgeous in the winter and there’s also some party that they want me to go to. Of course I think that would be awesome and I would love to go, but I’m not sure if it’s a good idea. We figured out it’s only like a 7 hour drive from Austin, but I worry about blurring the line between me being their friend and me being their superior. Superior sounds kind of weird, but I guess that’s kind of what I am. There’s probably a better word for it, but that works for now.

Now that I’m actually visiting a chapter, I really am excited about this job! I was excited before but I was also nervous because I didn’t know how it was going to go and if I’d be good at it, etc. So far, so good! I am struggling with the fact that I don’t have access to the internet whenever I need it (I haven’t had it since 2:00 today and won’t have it until who know when tomorrow. I hope 1:30, but it might not be until… well I might not get to at all, which will suck because I have some emails I have to send with attachments so I can’t use my iPhone. Ugh). Exciting news: Nicole extended 6 bids to girls at Clayton State yesterday and today and all 6 women accepted! Yay! Apparently she also got in a car accident today (just a fender bender and the other women got mad and drove off, so nothing too bad). There was a close call in the car I was in today, and because it was raining I got kind of a flash back of “the wreck” and almost lost my marbles. It was really scary.

One of the things that I got to do today with the chapter was go to a welcome week pool party. It was hosted by the Greeks so we all went in either swim suits or letters. When we got there I noticed there was a girl who looked like a stereotypical sorority girl. She was skinny, blonde hair, wearing this cute little swim suit cover up, wedges and lots of making including bright pink lipstick. I kind of laughed to myself when I saw her and though of how that’s what I used to picture when I though of sorority girls. As the pool party went on I started noticing more and more girls that looked like this and they were all hanging out together. Each one that I noticed looked more ridiculous than the girl before her and I couldn’t help but think how glad I am that none of the girls in the chapter here look like that. None of them struck me as particularly pretty. They were all trying way too hard to fit the mold of what they thought I pretty girl should be, and they looked so unnatural doing it. I talked to a couple of the girls in our chapter and they said that those are the Sigma girls (Sigma Sigma Sigma) and they’re required to look like that. Apparently (and I’m sure this is exaggerated some), they only accept skinny girls and the only exception they’ve made to that rule is for a legacy, and since she’s joined she’s lost like 20 lbs. I guess if the girl isn’t pretty or skinny enough then she’s not allowed to wear her letters on campus. I think this is ridiculous and I didn’t believe the first girl that told me this, but then another chapter member told me the same thing. I couldn’t believe I was hearing that people really act like this. I really wanted to take a picture of some of these girls with my phone but I thought that might look weird to whoever was standing behind me. They really looked like ugly, plastic Barbie dolls. There was only 4 or 5 of them at the pool party and, thankfully, none of the freshman looked like that. I wonder if they really think that their look appeal to people. I wonder if there were girls at the pool party who saw them and though “I want to be like that!” There were lots of pretty girls at the pool party and the girls that I thought we the prettiest were the ones that weren’t trying that hard; girls that didn’t look like they had caked on a pound of makeup before heading out to lay by the pool. I can’t wait to see what these Sigma girls look like during recruitment.

A window into my life

This is a picture of the student union building at Clayton State.

So is this (a close up)

This is me behind letters at Psi Psi

This is the tiny little place that I flew on from Dallas to Louisiana. It was so exciting to get to walk off the stairs of the plane!

Alligators and crawfish

Saturday, August 23, 2008
11:16 am
I am definitely a bit anti-social. I woke up this morning before my alarm went off (around 8:45) just now left my bedroom for the first time because it was the first time I knew I wouldn’t risk running into Betsy. She really is a nice woman, but I think she might be a bit lonely (she lives by herself) and she really likes to talk. I don’t. I heard some noises outside my window and when I looked I saw her outside playing in her garden. That’s when I decided to venture out to the kitchen and have some strawberries. She has 4 cats. I don’t like cats. While I was cutting my strawberries on the only clean part of the kitchen counter that I could find, one was rubbing against my leg and another was walking on the kitchen counter, trying to get close enough to see what I was doing. When you’re staying in someone else’s house and you’re chopping food you’re about to eat, you don’t really want to have to wonder if you should have wiped off the counter before putting the food on it. You don’t want to think about where the cat has been walking and if you’re strawberries are now covered in the same stuff as the cat’s feet.

I think her house is a bit too big for her. She definitely has enough stuff to fill the house, but that’s all it is. Betsy and a lot of stuff. Her house is also very old looking. I can imagine an old woman living here alone. She has stuff everywhere and everything is covered in cobwebs or cat hair. I guess some of the girls from Psi Psi came over on Thursday to help her clean to prepare for my arrival, which I appreciate. You can’t really tell though. My room is nice and clean except for the boxes of stuff along one of the walls that belong to the Psi Psi chapter. She said there wasn’t enough room in their storage unit for all their stuff, so she lets them keep boxes at her place. She really is a sweet woman and cares about these girls a lot. There is a chapter member who lives near New Orleans, which is about 4 and a half hours from here. Betsy is letting her keep boxes and boxes of her stuff at Betsy’s house for the summer because she didn’t have a way to get her stuff home. Now there’s a little twist in that story: the girl emailed that chapter yesterday morning saying that her bus was supposed to arrive in Natchitoches yesterday afternoon but she needed someone to pick her up from the bus station and a place to stay until she was able to move back into her apartment on Monday. The girl that was going to be able to pick her up tried calling her all day to let her know that she could but was unable to reach her. She went to the bus station anyway and waited and waited and the girl never got off the bus. A couple hours later we find out that this girl from New Orleans has now decided to live at home this semester and take classes online, so she never got on the bus and never bothered telling anyone that she wasn’t coming.

It really sucks that I don’t have internet out here. I’m kind of used to it since we didn’t have internet in our apartment at Pickwick. At Pickwick, though, we were able to walk over to the Club House and use it there and if it wasn’t working, we were guaranteed to be able to get on at work the next day. It also wasn’t too big of a deal because we didn’t have work that we needed to get done at home and use the internet for. Now I do. It really wouldn’t be too bad if I knew I was guaranteed to get to have internet on campus. Betsy said that I can use other girl’s computers when I need internet, but there are things that I can only access through my computer logged into the VPN. Oh well. I’ll just have to figure out how to make it work and make the best of it.

Sunday, August 24, 2008
10:00 am
Yesterday afternoon I met with Jenn Styron. She was one of the girls to help get Psi Psi reinstalled as a chapter like 6 years ago and she was also an LC when she graduated. Now she’s a volunteer for ASA and is the chapter development coordinator for Psi Psi. She’s awesome! She was shocked to hear that we didn’t have LC buddies set up so she said she’s going to adopt me as an LC buddy and try and get Nicole one as well. I’m excited! During our meeting she and I talked about what we’re going to tell the chapter tomorrow when we meet with them. I’m very nervous. She also took me to a little hot dog stand that has internet so I could check my email and stuff, which I was very grateful for.

Talking to Jenn made me think some more about what I want to do with my life. While I was at Clayton State with Nicole, I was commenting on how much I love this job, especially getting to do expansion work at a University. It’s like being in college except you don’t have to worry about classes and test and you get paid for it instead of having to pay for it. Nicole said that’s why she wants to go into Student Affairs. I’d honestly never really though about that until I took this job. That’s also what Jenn wants to do. Nicole wants to be more in charge of Student Activities and programming, but I think if I did it I’d want to be a Greek Advisor. I’m not really sure about it though. I really love my job and I know that if I did student affairs I’d really love it, but it conflicts with what I’d always said I’d do. I really love kids and have always wanted to work with them and I feel kind of guilty considering doing something else with my life. Working in higher education would be very enjoyable, but how much difference would I be making? Working with younger kids, I know I’d be making a difference in their lives, especially if I go into social work. But when I was working at the Boys and Girls Club this summer, I loved the kids and working with them, but there were many mornings when, if given the option, I would not have gone to work. That’s not the case now. I am excited about the job that I do and have looked forward to going to work every morning for the last 7 weeks. I think that has more to do with the ASA aspect of the job than just the college life aspect, so I could always get a job working at HQ instead of at a University. I was talking with Stacy, the executive director of the Foundation, and she said there seems to be a very high turn over rate at HQ, so if it’s something that I want to do, I’d probably only have to wait a couple of year for a spot to open up. That’s good because I want to get my masters no matter what, but now I’m starting to think more about what area I want to get it in. Higher Education, Psychology, Elementary Education… I still have time to think about it more, but I’m really torn.

I was talking to John on the phone the other day and I was telling him all about Clayton State and he was like “Oh! You have the perfect job right now to be scouting out different grad schools!” I laughed because that’s something that Nicole and I talked about right away and part of the reasons that she took the job. I am excited to see all these different schools and what they have to offer. I took a tour of Northwestern’s campus yesterday and, as of now, I definitely like Clayton better. Clayton’s campus was just gorgeous and very new looking. Northwestern is very old looking, but not like vintage/antique-y old, just like run down old. And it’s very hot here, just like in Texas. I definitely got spoiled working in Indy this summer because I could wear basically whatever I wanted to the office because it was only like 80-85 degrees. Now that I’m back in the south, I have to really plan out what I’m going to wear based on how bad I’m going to sweat in it in the first 5 minutes I’m outside. Yuck. I like the heat in the summer, but not when I have to be dressed in business casual. Or, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad except that I couldn’t really buy a lot of summery business clothes for this job because I knew I was going to be traveling up north as well where they’d do me no good at all.

Last night for dinner Betsy took us to a local restaurant called Mariners that was really nice. It sat right on the lake and was mostly windows, so the view was beautiful. We were on the wrong side of the restaurant to see the sun set, but it was still really pretty. For appetizers we got mini meat pies, which apparently are something that you have to try when you’re visiting Natchitoches, and some blackened alligator. They were both really good! For my entrée I had blackened tilapia with crawfish etufee on it. It was delicious! It was a lot of food so I wasn’t able to eat it all and I’m really looking forward to having leftovers for lunch. Betsy’s an ecologist and works more on the math and theorem side of ecology (she wrote her dissertation on orchids). Besides both of us being members of ASA and liking healthy food, we really have nothing in common at all. She told us that the reason she lives such a boring life is because she get her excitement fix all in one year and now she’s done with excitement. One job that she had was working on one of the swamps in Georgia and she said that she had several close calls with some alligators. Later that year she was asked to go to Jerusalem and live for 4 months (I forget why). She apparently did not want to go and told them so several times before they finally convinced her to go. She went right before the Gulf war and she said that there were guns everywhere. You would be walking down the street and pass modern, orthodox couple pushing a stroller with their child in it and the husband would have an oozy tossed casually over his shoulder. It was crazy hearing her talk about some of this stuff.

11:30 pm
Goodness I am tired. I had my first meeting with a chapter tonight! It was good, but a bit stressful. This chapter needs a lot of help because they’re so small, but they really seem to be a great group of women and I’m looking forward to working with them! They all seem to be pretty excited about meeting me and taking me out to eat and cooking for me and are even offering to let me stay with them if I start to get tired of staying with Betsy. I am very excited at the moment and I have really high hopes for these ladies and hope that I’m not disappointed. I also hope that I don’t end up being a disappointment to them!

I got to talk to John tonight for the last time before he leaves for India. It was sad, but I know we’re going to do a good job of keeping in touch through email and such, so I don’t feel as though my life (or our friendship) is ending. We talked for over an hour and it was a really good last conversation. I was pleased with it and I think that he was too. I really like the way that our friendship has evolved over the last three and a half years. We better not grow apart while he’s in India. That’ll upset me.

Expanding my horizons and my sorority but not my waistline.

Friday, August 22, 2008
9:30 am
Right now I’m sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting for my flight to Alexandria, Louisiana. It upsets me that all airports don’t offer free internet. The Denver airport does but the Indianapolis and Atlanta ones do not. It’s like $8. With as expensive as everything else is in airports, you’d think they could just let us use the internet for free. Lame.

I really enjoyed my trip to Clayton State with Nicole and I’m sad that I’m leaving. We got to Georgia on Sunday and we were exhausted. Our flight didn’t land until 7:30, so it was like 8:30 by the time we finally left the airport with our rental car and we were starving. We made it back to our hotel, checked in and then tried to find a place to eat. We didn’t really know the area well (obviously) so we drove around for a while to see what we could find. Morrow, Georgia has a lot of fast food places, Asian restaurants and car lots. We didn’t find anything that sounded great, so we just settled on Cracker Barrel. When we checked into our hotel, they gave us each a little punch card so we could each get 3 free drinks at the hotel bar every day during happy hour. We thought that was pretty nifty.

Monday was quite a busy day for us. We had to be at campus at 8 to get some posters approved to hang up. That part was easy enough, but we walked around campus forever before we found the bulletin boards to actually hang them on. Clayton State’s campus is gorgeous. It’s covered with tall pine trees and has a really pretty little lake with a bunch of ducks/geese. At 10 we had an info table set up on the main walkway of campus. Nicole and I decided that the best approach for this table wasn’t to just sit there with all our stuff and smile at people as they walked by; the whole point of us being there is to meet girls and get them interested in ASA so we can start a colony. So instead we stood in front of the table and engaged girls in conversation and then directed them towards the table where we had fliers with more information and they could sign up to give us their contact information. It was kind of hard at first since I’m not usually one to engage a stranger in conversation, but after I watched Nicole do it a few times I tried it and it wasn’t too bad. After 4 hours we had like 37 girls sign up for us to call/email them with more information. I was pretty proud of us. Nicole and I didn’t realize until we got there that Clayton’s campus is considered the most culturally diverse campus in the southeast, so we were both quite surprised when we got there and 75% or more of the student population was black. We knew that the only Greek organizations they had on campus at that point were NPHC organizations, which are typically all black, but for some reason it didn’t click that that was probably a good indication of what the student body as a whole would look like. After that we had a break until 5 so we went back to the hotel and called and emailed all the girls on our list and invited them to go out and get smoothies with us later so we could get to know them better. At 5 we had a dinner appointment with a potential new member (PNM) that Nicole had been emailing before we got to Georgia. Her name was Turquoise and she brought her roommate Rashonda to dinner with her. Both girls were freshman and super sweet girls! We had a lot of fun eating with them and then they joined us for smoothies afterwards. Two other girls showed up for smoothies and Nicole and I were really glad that most people had to work and we only have 4 girls there; it gave us a chance to get to know them better. At the end of the night we were pretty excited with how the day went and really pleased with the girls that we met.

It was about 9:30 by the time we got back to our hotel Monday night but we still had to prepare for our info session that we had the next morning. The info session was pretty successful as well. We had 16 women show up to that. Nicole and I stood up and talked about ASA for a while and then we took questions. These woman were asking some really great questions. For some reason when I think of woman who want to join a sorority, I forget that they usually want to join for good reasons, the same as I did, and not just to make more friends and go to socials, so I’m always pleasantly surprised when they ask about our values and our philanthropies. There was also another sorority on campus who was trying to start a colony (Theta Phi Alpha) and their LC arrived that day. She didn’t have the same “get out there and meet her” approach that Nicole and I had when we were at our info table the day before, and when we walked by her table that afternoon we saw her just sitting there texting. We stopped and said hi to her since we’d met her earlier the summer, but she wasn’t as friendly as we remembered. Alpha Kappa Lambda, the new fraternity that was starting at Clayton, had gotten there that day too. Those are the same guys who were at Krystal’s house for dinner last week and who met up with us the night of Nicole’s birthday. They’re really great guys so the 5 of us went to dinner that night. After dinner we had planned to get ice cream at Sonic with some of the women we’d met our info session earlier that day. We had 3 women show up this time and one of them, Victoria, is absolutely amazing! She already knows what position she thinks she wants to hold and she gave us names of a few more girls that she’d been talking to about ASA. It was great!

Wednesday Nicole and I didn’t have as much going on. We had a lunch date with another PNM that we hadn’t met yet named Jessica. Again, this girl was amazing! She asked all kinds of terrific questions and really seems like she’d make a great member. We sat and talked with her over lunch for about an hour. After we were finished with lunch, we ran into another PNM we’d met earlier the week, so we sat and chatted with her for a while. While we were sitting with her, one of the girls Victoria had been talking to called Nicole to see if we were on campus and if she could come and talk to us some more about ASA. She had a lot of questions and we ended up talking with her for more than an hour. We’re not quite sure if she’s going to join because she had so many concerns, but she was a really nice girl and definitely had potential. Later that night Nicole and I went to Laker Night, which is kinda like Rock n Bowl at Schreiner. It wasn’t that fun, but we made a few connections that ended up being helpful later in the week, so that was good.

Thursday there was a student involvement fair on campus and all the student organizations had tables set up out on the quad for people to walk by and get more info. All the Greeks were set up together so we got to meet people from all the other organizations that are already established. They’re all really nice and excited that the three new organizations are on campus, which is nice! Our table was set up with the AKL guys on one side of us and the Theta Phi Alpha girl on the other side. AKL was taking the same approach as us and getting up and talking to people; again the Theta girl just sat behind her table and hoped that people would approach her. At the end of the fair, we had like 31 new names on our list and we had a lot of fun. After that we were pretty much done for the day so the AKL guys came back to the hotel with us and we all hung out. Then we went to dinner together at Joe’s Crab shack and headed to watch the student organization showcase together. That was just a step show put on by the other Greeks (stepping is historically something that the NPHC organizations do). It was fun to watch. After that we all went back to the hotel to celebrate my last night in Georgia.

This is a picture of me and Nicole at the student involvement fair on Thursday. It was very humid that day.

They students at Clayton are all really friendly. I figured that since they already had 4 sororities on campus that are considered “black sororities” that our main pool of interest would be the white girls on campus. That wasn’t the case. We had a lot of black girls come up and ask if we were the new “white sorority” on campus and what we were all about. We’d tell them more about ASA and they were usually really interested and said things like “I never really thought about joining a sorority because I didn’t think I’d find one that fit with my values, but this one sounds great!” That made Nicole and I feel awesome! I was really sad to have to leave today. Nicole and I have been together everyday for the last 7 weeks, and it’s weird that she and I aren’t going to see each other now until November. I was also sad that I got to help her meet all these great women and I’m not going to get to be there to see them all join ASA and grow and making their colony amazing. I’m hoping that I can come back for their installation in the spring.

I’m nervous about my next visit. It’s to Psi Psi, the revitalization chapter. They only have 8 girls at the moment when most chapters on their campus are around 90. I’m meeting with their advisors over dinner tonight and I’m just getting worried that I don’t know enough or that I don’t have enough authority (or balls) to tell them what I need to. I’m going to be there for 2 weeks and I’m sure that after the first couple of days I’ll be feeling a lot better, but at the moment I’m nervous! I have a lot of work to do with this chapter. The chapter isn’t used to having to do things for themselves. Their advisor seems to do a lot of things for them and, until the other day, the campus was under the impression that I was coming in to fix things for the chapter. They were surprised, and not in a pleasant way, when they realized that I’m here to help the chapter fix themselves and that I’m not just going to be doing things for them. Hopefully the Greek advisor will support me and it will all go smoothly. We’ll see when I get there I guess.

I’m really proud of myself! I’ve been eating really well since I left Indy. I am sure they didn’t mean to, but my co-workers at headquarters really made me feel stupid for wanting to eat healthy and exercise. We also went out to eat together a lot, so I’d end up ordering something fried and delicious like everyone else. I decided that I was really going to try and get back into eating healthy when I hit the road, and so far it’s been going pretty well! I’ve had things like fat free yogurt and fruit for breakfast, a salad with grilled chicken and fat free dressing for lunch, and good things for dinner too. Even when we went out to eat with the guys a couple of times, I made smart choices and tried to get things that I knew were lower in fat and calories. I did have a few beers last night at my going away get together, but I’m decided that was ok since I’m not going to be drinking at all over the next few months.

I’ve gotten homesick a little since I’ve been away, but it really hasn’t been too bad. Nicole and I became pretty close so, even though I really miss my friends from home, I still felt like I had a friend with me everywhere I went (literally, because we went everywhere together). Now I’m going to be traveling by myself and now that schools started I’ll have to hear about all my friends hanging out together and having fun without me. I’m afraid that I’m going to get super sad and depressed. I definitely hope that’s not the case, because at this point I’m really considering doing this for a second year. We’ll see how this year goes first.

9:00 pm
I am in Louisiana now! My flight from Atlanta to Dallas wasn’t bad. I was really cold, but I did get to get a little bit of sleep. I was internetless again at the Dallas airport, but I kind of expected it. My favorite part of the day was my flight from Dallas to Alexandria. I was on this tiny little plane that only had one seat on the left and two on the right and only went back 15 rows. And the plane had big propellers on either side of it! It reminded me of the plane from the cartoon Tale Spin. The overhead compartments were tiny and people had to check a lot of luggage that they can normally carry one because it simply wouldn’t fit on the plane. The flight was a lot bumpier than I’m used to and the salad that I’d had for lunch wasn’t very good and those combined made for the first time I ever felt sick on a plane. When we got ready to land, the flight attendant informed us that we would be deboarding the plane via the stairs, so to be sure to hold on to the railing on our way down. That part really excited me, so once I got off the plane, I turned and took a picture of it with my phone.

The chapter advisor from Psi Psi picked me up from the airport. Her name is Betsy and she’s a really sweet woman. My plane landed around 2:45 and it took no time at all for me to get my luggage (there’s only one baggage claim belt in the airport and mine was the only plane that had just landed), so to kill time before dinner we did some random shopping around town; nothing too exciting. We met up with a few of the advisors for dinner, and at first it was kind of weird. These are all women who were once members of Psi Psi and have known each other for years, so it was a bit awkward for me sitting there while they all chatted about their lives. Once we’d gotten our food I kind of guided the conversation to the chapter as it is now and their views of it, etc. Hearing all that they had to say was very helpful, but a bit overwhelming. The chapter has a lot of areas that they need to work on, and hearing about all of it at once was a bit intense. At first I was trying to remember everything that they were saying so I could make a point to try and work on these areas with the women when I meet with them over the next two weeks, but after a while I realized that there is no way I am going to be able to fix all of their problems this school year, let alone this visit. I then tried to focus on the issues that seemed to be the most prominent and relevant at the moment and I’m feeling a lot better about it.

I’m staying in the extra bedroom at Betsy’s house, which is nice because I have a big bed, my own bathroom, free laundry and food, etc. However, I do no have internet access at her house. It seems that I might not really have much internet access on campus either unless I’m on someone else’s computer, which might prove to be a problem. I think I am going to talk to one of the students and see if there is some way that I can gain access it from my laptop. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

A little mustard too.

Sunday, Augusy 17, 2008
Nicole was still a bit drunk when we woke up Tuesday morning and was looking a little ragged. By dinner, she was doing just fine though! For dinner that night, we went to an Italian place with Nicole’s friends from home and some girls from work. I always enjoy getting to hang out with the girls from work outside of the office. We have a lot of fun when we’re at work, but it’s still nice to get to know them outside of the ASA world. Then we headed back to our place to wait until it was time to go and hit the bars for real! While we waited for 10 o’clock to roll around, Nicole and I sat and talked with Naydia and Emily. Naydia was an LC and traveled with Amber a couple of years back and Emily was an LC last year and was just in town to do some training with us. It was great getting to sit around and talk with them because we got to ask them about different chapters that they’d been to that we were going to, how training has changed over the years with the different people that have been in charge of it and just different things about ASA in a totally casual way. It was wonderful! We left the apartment around 10 and met up with the guys from AKL that we’d met the night before at dinner at Krystal’s house (Corey, Jeff and Eric). We had a lot of fun! At the first bar that we were at, I played pool for a while with the guys, which was fun even though I really suck at pool. Corey had brought a friend with him who we hadn’t met yet (Byron). He was pretty cute. He and I flirted for a while, then he kind he moved on to flirting with Nicole. I’m pretty used to this since I used to hang out with Emily. We stayed at the first bar for quite a while before moving on to a couple of others. At the end of the night Byron started flirting with me again, and it just kind of made me laugh on the inside. Nicole’s friends and Byron wanted to keep drinking after we left the bar, so we stopped at the store and bought some stuff and headed back to our apartment. Most people had gone home at this point, so it was just me and Nicole, her 3 friends and Byron. It was quite the night!

Wednesday we had training at work with Emily, and just that one day of training with her so more helpful than a weeks worth that we’d gotten before. I really enjoyed the training with her; not only was it great to get insight about things from someone who got done traveling just months ago, but she’s also a lot of fun! She’s moving to Ireland in September to do grad school and I’m terribly inspired by her! She doesn’t know anyone at all in Ireland and has never been there before. She got a scholarship to go to school over there, so she thought, why not? She’s going to stay in youth hostiles when she gets over there while she tries to find an apartment. I think that would be fun to do. Thursday was just a normal day at the office. Nicole and I were a little bit frantic trying to figure out how we were going to get everything done that we needed to before heading out on the road. We were panicking a bit we had a million things to do and Friday was our last day in the office.

Thursday night Nicole and I went to the Indiana state fair with Christy, Naydia and Andy (Amber’s fiancée). Going to the state fair is a lot different when you’re an adult than it is when you’re a kid. Well, I guess it is for some people. All we did was walk around for a few hours eating fair food (and we ate tons of it!). I would have loved to have ridden some of the rides, but no one else wanted to and I didn’t want to pay for coupons to ride on rides by myself. We all ate so much food, it was ridiculous. Friday at the office Nicole and I had tons to do to prepare for our upcoming visits.

Friday is normally a half day but there was no way that we could get everything done that we needed to by noon, so Christy offered to let us stay at the office and come back and get us around 5 and that worked out pretty well. Friday night we were planning on going to an Indians game with Christy, Naydia and Aly, but that didn’t work out so well. There was apparently some big gaming convention or something going on down there near the stadium and so parking was just nonexistent. After driving around for a while, we just decided to forget it and go out to dinner instead. We had a good time and Nicole and I got a little sad because we were just getting all settled and feeling at home in Indy and now it was time to say goodbye to everyone again.

Saturday Nicole and I had to run a few errands around town, and since we’re carless now (thanks to me) Aly volunteered to come pick us up and tote us around town. Aly is a hoot! Absolutely hilarious, so we had a great time with her. Later that night we went to go see the Sex and the City movie even thought we’d all already seen it before. We saw it in a theatre kind of like the Alamo Draft House, but not as good. The movie made me super sad about how I haven’t seen my friends in 7 weeks and I’m not going to get to see them for like another 8. I know the next 8 weeks of my life are going to be interesting though (and hopefully exciting), so while I do miss my friends, I’m still looking forward to what comes next for me.

Now that I'm all caught up on my life in Indy, here are some pictures of where I spent my last 6 weeks.

This picture (above) is the view of Nicole and I's office from the door way.

This picture (above) is the kitchen at HQ.

This picture is the boardroom where we had a lot of our training sessions.

This is my desk. Yes, it was a mess, but I used everything on there every single day and I cleaned it all up when I left each day.

This is my lovely Nicole.

Catch up. Catsup. Ketchup.

Still catching up on all the days I didn’t write anything… It's taking me a while. Sorry.

Tuesday, August 27, 2008
Christy gave us the day off on Monday to recuperate from the accident and it’s a good thing because the next few days were crazy! Monday evening we went to dinner at Krystal’s house (that’s Christy’s boss). Her husband is a member of Alpha Kappa Lambda (AKL) and so he invited his consultants to dinner too. It was fun getting to meet them and hang out and dinner was really good. It was also interesting to see Krystal outside of the office. She’s really quiet, no matter where we are. After dinner Christy dropped us back off at our apartment (remember that we’re carless now) where some of Nicole’s friends from Michigan were waiting for us. Nicole turned 21 at midnight that night so they came down to help celebrate. We left around 11 to try and scope some places out that we could go at midnight on a Monday night, and it turns out that the pickins are slim. We started out at Buffalo Wild Wings, which was awful. The place was almost empty but we still had to wait forever for our drinks and stuff. Nicole also found a fly in one of her drinks. We did have a couple of drinks there, and I took my first ever Blow Job (it’s a type of shot) but then we decided to head down to a little bar on the corner. This place wasn’t that nice, but it ended up being pretty fun. Our waitress was really nice and fun and recommended some shots that we’d never taken before. I told Nicole that I would match her shot for shot and drink for drink that night. I think we ended up taking about 7 different shots and having one drink. The shots were mixed shots though, not just straight liquor! When we left there we went to Steak n Shake for a snack and then back home where we stayed up until almost 4 just sitting around. It was really relaxing and a lot of fun.

Crash and burn, girl. We're going down, down, down.

Since it has been a while since I’ve blogged, I’m kind of skipping ahead to the next weekend. I’ll summarize the week: we did lots of training! We had lunch with a couple of people this week who volunteer for ASA and I have realized that I officially SUCK at making small talk.

Sunday, August 10, 2008
Friday we had training with Julie Levine and also with Erica Butts, both of whom are awesome! We went out to lunch with them and the rest of the girls from the work and then had to head back to the office because we had so much work to do. We usually head out around noon on Fridays, but we just couldn’t today. All this past week Nicole and I have been making plans to go to Cedar Point, which is an amusement park in Ohio with the best roller coasters in the US (so I hear anyway) so once we got all of our work done on Friday we bought our tickets online and reserved a hotel. We were originally planning on driving up to Ohio on Friday night (4-5 hour drive), staying in a hotel and then hitting the roller coasters and driving home on Saturday. We decided to change our plans because all of the District Facilitators were in town for training that weekend and Christy invited us to eat lunch with all of them, so we made plans to drive up Sat night instead and hit the coasters and drive home on Sunday.

Saturday morning I got up early and went to an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. I was really nervous about going, but after the week I’d had in relation to food I decided I just needed to suck it up and go. I like it a lot and decided that I definitely wanted to try it again. They recommend going to 6 or so different meetings before getting a sponsor and deciding that the program is right for you. They gave me a packet for new comers with a list of meetings and times and I figured out that I’d definitely be able to go to at least 3 more before hitting the road, and while that’s still not 6, I was feeling optimistic about it. After my meeting, I went back to the office and picked up Nicole to head to the office and have lunch with the DFs. I’d already met two of the three DFs that I’m going to be working with this year and it was nice to meet the third and to get to talk more with the others that I already knew. Just before lunch started, Amber asked Nicole and I to give an impromptu presentation to the DFs during their training about the new recruitment strategies we have for the upcoming year. I think for only having 10 minutes to prepare for it we really did pretty well. I got several emails the next week telling me that we did a great job, so I believe it. After we got done at the office, Nicole and I packed our bags and hit the road!

Once we got to Ohio we ran into some clouds. It never actually rained on us, we were more just chasing the rain and getting the wet roads. It was annoying because even though it wasn’t raining, I still had to have my wipers on because of all the water getting splashed up on to me windshield. When we were exiting the highway I should have realized that I needed to be going slower than normal due to the wet roads, but I guess because it wasn’t actually raining I didn’t really think about it. We exited and the exit was one turns to the right and winds in a big circle. As we rounded the curve I realized that we were going too fast. As it was happening, I thought “Shit, I’m going too fast.” I tried to slow down some and I could feel the car life off the pavement and hydroplane. We started to skid off the road to the left and I though “Damn it. I hope we just fishtail a bit and don’t actually skid off the road, and if we do I hope it’s we’re able to get back on the road with no big deal and don’t end up stuck in the ditch”. I tried to maneuver us back on to the road and too late I remembered that when you start to spin you’re supposed to turn the wheel in the direction you’re spinning, not the opposite direction like your instinct would tell you to do. The next thing in know I felt the car slam on my left side, then we were upside down and then right side up. While this was happening, my thoughts we “HOLY FUCK! The car is rolling. I flipped the car. I can’t believe I’m such an idiot and I flipped the car. We could die. I’m going to die, like, cease to be alive and experience life anymore. This could be the moment I die. Oh my God, if we both die it’s all my fault. If we don’t die, we’re going to be seriously bloody and mangled. Oh my God, I’m going to be in so much trouble. I can’t believe I fucking did this. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen in real life. Not to me anyway. It’s all my fault”. Instead of my life flashing before my eyes in an instant, these are the thoughts that went through my head in an instant. It was seriously the scariest thing that has ever happened to me. Luckily, the car landed upright. When it did, I immediately unbuckled my seat belt and forced my door open as far as it would open, which wasn’t far. I squeezed out of the car, stood up and looked over the roof and saw Nicole’s head pop up on the other side. “Oh my God. We’re both ok. How are we both ok? I can’t believe the car landed up right. We are so fucking lucking. Thank God. Literally. How can people not believe in God after shit like this?”. Nicole and I established that we were both ok so she crawled back in to turn the car off (I was afraid it would blow up if we left it on) and fish out my phone (which was completely unharmed) so I could call 911.

I told the cops where we were and they asked if we needed an ambulance. Nicole and I couldn’t think past “we’re alive” and we figured that since we were alive and walking around then there couldn’t possibly be anything else wrong with us. Once the cop got there and saw the car (smashed and totaled, of course) he asked again if we thought we needed an ambulance. At this point dark bruises were popping up all over me and my back was starting to hurt a bit. Nicole’s back was hurting even more, so the cop said we needed to get an ambulance. While we waited for the ambulance, I grabbed my camera (which also survived the wreck) and took some pictures of the damage. When the paramedics got there they told us that we really should go to the hospital. They then strapped us to back boards and loaded us up. It was so unreal. Riding in the ambulance, staring at the ceiling and not being able to move, all I could think was that Nicole must be so mad at me for crashing the car and ruining our trip to Cedar Park (we were 10 minutes from our hotel when we crashed). I was convinced that she was really pissed at me and wasn’t going to want to talk to me the rest of the time we were in Indy for training. Then I started thinking about what my bosses were going to think. I just knew they were going to be mad at me for wrecking the car (it was a rental being paid for by ASA) and what the hell were we going to do for a car now? We have no way to get to the office. Nicole isn’t old enough to rent a car yet (silly girl is still 20) and I’m sure there’s no way Enterprise will ever let me rent from them, nor will ASA let me rent a car. All I could think was that I fucked everything up I started to cry and the paramedics thought it was because of the pain. When we got to the hospital they took me to a room and just kind of left me there to wait on a doctor. I had to pee so badly. We had been waiting to get to the hotel to potty and get food, but we never made it to the hotel. We crashed at almost exactly 7 and by this point it was 8:45. It was almost 10 before a doctor came in to see me, and in the mean time I’m strapped to the bed, uncomfortable and unable to move and I seriously thought I was going to set the bed. I thought about pressing the call nurse button, but I was afraid she’s tell me that she couldn’t unstrap me and try and make me use a bed pan. That was just not going to happen. After the doctor determined that I was ok and prescribed me some pain killers and muscle relaxers I was finally unable to go to the bathroom. That meant I was also able to look in the mirror and assess the damage to my body. I had a bruise on the left side of my forehead and a bit of a black eye, deep purple bruises on my left arm and lower left back/upper butt plus a cut on my left arm and some other bruises scattered around. The bruises on my back/butt were so intense that it hurt to walk due to the fact that it made my skin move. It was awful, but I was still so grateful that all I had were those bruises. I showed them to Nicole and she said it looked like someone beat the shit out of me and was really trying to kill me.

After the accident happened, Nicole called her mom, who then called her dad because he only lives about an hour from where we were. So her dad and her step mom decided to drive on down. They picked us up from the hospital and took us to grab some fast food and then to the hotel we’d made reservations at. We needed a room with two beds instead of one because her parents needed to be able to wake us up periodically to make sure we were ok since we’d both hit our heads. They were going to charge us an arm and a leg to switch rooms so her parents decided to just go to another hotel. As it turns out, every hotel in a thirty minute radius was completely booked. Her parents decided that since we were already half way there, we’d just drive to Michigan and they’d get us a hotel room and they’d go on home and just call us every couple of hours. It was about 1 by the time we finally got into a hotel room and were able to go to sleep. We were both so tired and in so much pain; we were miserable. Nicole’s dad also thought it would be funny to jerk the wheel every now and then to make the car swerve and pretend that he’d lost control. That’s something that is maybe funny a week after a serious accident, not a couple of hour afterwards. I was seriously so scared and uncomfortable, it was horrible. The next morning we went to breakfast with Nicole’s dad, stepmom and mom. It kind of sucks when something serious like this happens to you and you’re not able to be around your family but the person you’re with is. They were all very nice to me and her mom even got me flowers, but it’s not the same. After breakfast we hit the road. Nicole’s dad was going to drive us half way back to Indiana where Christy was going to meet us to bring us the rest of the way back. Christy wasn’t mad at all and said she was just glad that we were ok. And luckily, the sororities insurance covers the accident since it happened in a rental car that was being paid for by sorority funds and we don’t have to deal with my insurance company at all. My insurance might still go up some because I did get a $95 ticket for failure to control my vehicle, but they won’t know that it’s because I completely totaled a car, so that’s good.

So that was basically our weekend. We never made it to Cedar Point and people joked all weekend long that we took a rollercoaster ride of our own. Ha. Ha.

Catching up from my procrastination

So, it’s been about 2 weeks since I’ve posted a blog, or written in my journal at all, so this one might be a bit lengthy and is going to cover quite a bit of time. I’ll try and be as detailed as I can when recalling everything and I guess I’ll just start where I left off.

Sunday, August 3, 2008
I didn’t end up getting to go see Crystal this weekend, but I did take another fun trip. Nicole and I got off of work on Friday and were just sitting around the apartment doing nothing, like always. She came out of her bedroom at about 2:30 and this is how the conversation went.
N: Hey, we’ve been invited to a party for tonight.
C: Oh yeah, where at?
N: In Michigan. It’s like 5 hours away.
C: Ok. Go pack a bag and let’s go.
N: Seriously? You want to drive 5 hours to go to a party?
C: Why not? What else do we have to do this weekend?
So Nicole and I went and packed a weekend bag and were in the car on the road to Michigan 30 minutes later. It was completely random ended up being so much fun! The drive was really pretty and we ended up getting there in 4 hours instead of 5. Once we got there she gave me a tour of her campus, which was awesome to see! It’s nuts how big it is compared to Schreiner, and she said her school isn’t even considered a “big” school. At 22,000 students, it’s just considered average. It was mind blowing for me. She showed me one apartment complex where some of the upper classman live and the entire student body of Schreiner could live there. Then she went on to show me freshman dorms that once again could fit all of Schreiner and then 3 or 4 more sets of apartment complexes that were HUGE. And they were so nice. I should have taken more pictures of them, but it’s weird to go into someone’s apartment that you just met and start taking pictures. I did take a picture of their chapter house though. I didn’t get to go inside because it’s closed for the summer, but I guess you walk in there’s a big chapter room and a bunch of hallways, and instead of there being a kitchen with lots of bathrooms and bedrooms, there’s a bunch of apartments in there. I’d put the picture up now, but I don’t have my camera at the moment. I’ll explain that later…

After Nicole gave me a tour of campus, we went to a restaurant where a couple of her friends were working and had some dinner. Her friend Kelsey was our waitress and she and I figured out right away that we would get along really well. Our plan was to eat dinner, then go to the party and then come back to the restaurant/bar and hang out with some other people. It got to be about 8:50 and this is how the conversation went/
C: Do we need to stop by the store and get some alcohol for the party?
N: Yeah, but the liquor store is right across the street.
C: Well, do we need to leave soon? What time does it close? It’s 8:50 now. In Texas the liquor stores close at 9:00.
*She gives me a look that says ‘oh, you poor thing’ and starts laughing hysterically*
N: Oh my God, really? The liquor stores here don’t close until like 1 or 2.
It’s moments like this that remind me how conservative the south really is. I forget these things because I’m liberal and I live in Austin.

So we go to the liquor store and get some peach flavored vodka, which I’d never had but Nicole insists tastes great with Crystal Light Peach Tea. She was right, it was good. I’m pretty excited about this party because this is going to be the first time that I’ve gotten to drink with Nicole. The party was being hosted by a bunch of her old residents (she was an RA her last two years of college). The guys were all really nice and most of the girls were too. Everyone was already a bit drunk when we got there, but we didn’t mind. Once of her residents, James, apparently has a thing for Nicole and the drunker they both get, the more apparent it becomes. I asked Nicole if she was interested in him at all and she assured me that she wasn’t, but her actions definitely suggested other wise. At some points it was kind of awkward for me because they’d be hanging all over each other and I didn’t really know anyone else, but I still had a good time. We ended up playing a game of Never Have I Ever and we all started with 10 fingers. I’m usually one of the first people to get out of this game because I’ve done a lot of things that my friends haven’t. I’m one of the more wild ones in my group of friends. Up to this point I’d always thought that Nicole was pretty innocent, but she went out and I still had 5 fingers up. I couldn’t believe it, and I also couldn’t believe some of the things that she had to put her fingers down for! It was crazy! While we were playing, I decided to text Zach because I haven’t talked to him in a few weeks. We joked about him driving to Indy to come visit one weekend, but since it’s an 18 hour drive from Austin to Indy, I knew it wouldn’t actually happen. It made me sad that Nicole was only a few hours from her friends and this was the second time since we’d started training that she got to see them and mine are all so far away. But I was enjoying getting to meet all of her friends!
After we finished that game, we left the party and went back The Pub where we had dinner and met up with some other people (someone came to get us, we didn’t not drive!). That wasn’t really that much fun because Nicole didn’t really know the people there because they were mostly coworkers and regular customers of Kelsey’s. After that we went back to Kelsey’s place and crashed.

Saturday was fun as well, but not really exciting. We went to lunch with Kelsey and her roommate Sarah and got some delicious Chinese food. Then we went looking for people to hang out with because Kelsey and Sarah both had to work. We found some sisters on campus, and that was quite the little adventure. She saw one of their cars so she knew they were home. We went and knocked on the door and a guy let us in. He told us the girls we upstairs. We started to head upstairs and were met halfway by a girl who was crying hysterically followed by two other girls. The girl who’s upset runs to Nicole and I could have sworn that the other girls mouthed that her mom and just died. WHOA! It turns out I’m not so good at reading lips and her mom hadn’t died; her boyfriend had broken up with her that morning. Still a big deal and something worth being upset about, but not quite as big of a deal as her mom dying. The situation was a bit awkward since I didn’t know her, so I excused myself to go call my dear friend John. After Nicole properly comforted her, we all went to the beach. There was some Navy thing going on and there were a ton of people there. It was kind of like a fair. We stayed like an hour, standing in line the entire time to get corn dogs, then we left and went to Lake Michigan (which is different from the beach) so I could see it. I’ve been to some of the Great Lakes before, but it’s been a long time. I’d forgotten how big they are. I’m not used to being at a lake that I can’t see the other side of. It was wonderful. We didn’t really do much after that. Nicole and I were pretty tired so we kind of just crashed at Kelsey’s.

Sunday was a pretty relaxing day as well. We met up with one of Nicole’s chapter sisters and had some lunch before going to see Step Brothers and then heading home. The movie was pretty entertaining. Not really my kind of movie, but it wasn’t too bad. We hit some pretty awful traffic on our way home, so it ended up taking us like 6 hours to get home instead of the 4 that we were expecting. But, overall, it was a damn fun trip and definitely worth the drive!

I am going to get some sleep now I’ve got a big day a head of me, so I’ll try and get on here tomorrow and finish catching up on my blogs!

I'm off to see the world, the wonderful world of...

I promise to write a blog about the more current events of my life soon, but for now, here is my schedule of where I'm going to be this semester!
Aug 17 – Aug 22 Clayton State University, Morrow, GA
Aug 23 – Sept 7 Psi Psi, Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, LA
Sept 7 – Sept 13 Rogers State University, Claremore, OK
Sept 14 – Sept 17 Delta Nu-A, Kettering University, Flint, MI
Sept 18 – Sept 27 Beta Theta, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI
Sept 28 – Oct 4 Zeta Rho, University of West Alabama, Livingston, AL
Oct 5 – Oct 11 Psi Psi, Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, LA
Oct 11 – Oct 19 VACATION IN TEXAS VACATION IN TEXAS
Oct 19 – Oct 22 Rogers State University, Claremore, OK
Oct 23 – Oct 26 Beta Gamma, Northeastern State University, Tahlequah, OK
Oct 27 – Nov 1 Alpha Beta, Truman State University, Kirksville, MO
Nov 2 – Nov 8 Beta Sigma, Missouri State University, Springfield, MO
Nov 9 – Nov 15 Zeta Alpha, Missouri Southern State University, Joplin, MO

Training to drive the train

Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Today was a great day. We had more training at that workshop with the other sororities and it went pretty well. The most important thing that I learned were some dos and don’ts for when I’m meeting with Greek advisors on other campuses, plus some travel tips from some second year LCs. After that was over, Nicole and I went to the mall and spent like 4 ½ hours there. On the way there, I talked to John on the phone and we had a great conversation. We had some super fun travel talk about India. It was rather exciting. He can have visitors while he’s in India and if, once he gets there and scopes it all out, he feels like he’s be ok having someone visit him then I’m going to buy me a plane ticket and go see him in India in December. I haven’t looked into details yet, but my parents are cool with it and I’ve already got like $1000 saved. All I need now is a green light from him and I begin my research into what I hope to be the beginning of my world travels. I suppose the job I have now going be viewed as the beginning, or my trip to France two years ago. That’s not the point. The point is I’m really going to travel!

At the mall, Nicole and I made some key purchases (like the black suit jacket I’ve been needing as well as two pairs of flats – purple and black) and we really had a lot of fun together! It was just the little bonding experience that we needed. I helped her pick out some going-out shirts for when she turns 21 in two weeks. There were some pretty hilarious moments, like talking about spanking with woman who works at Victoria’s Secret, the pimp we saw and the way home and the entire ride home in general. When we got home, there were like 10 more moments that (literally) had us rolling on the floor laughing. She even came into my room and sat on my bed and chatted with me a little about her life outside of being an LC. It was wonderful and we had fun and I’m feeling much less homesick now. Except I did talk to Emily on the phone, which made me sad, and then Brad called me and said he missed me and we chatted for a while. But overall I’m feeling much better than I was a few days ago!

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Today was my third day in a row to get up and do lunges and crunches. I really didn’t want to, but I just reminded myself that it takes 21 days to make something a habit and just one day to screw it all up and I didn’t want today to be the day that I screw everything up. I wasn’t very enthusiastic while doing these exercises, but I did them none the less.

Nicole and I went in to the office at 8. We found out that they did phone interviews for the 3rd LC. They didn’t tell us anything other than that so I guess we’ll just wait and see. We started looking into booking flights today and I emailed one of the chapters that I’m going to be visiting so it make it seem more real that we’re going to actually start traveling soon! I’m getting excited!

Nicole and I had another workshop to go to today. This one was about creating interactive workshops. It was very interesting and helpful, and a lot more fun than the other workshop we went to! Tomorrow is part two of this workshop (delivering an interactive workshop). It’s being held at Alpha Sigma Phi’s headquarters and we got to take a tour today. Their fraternity was started in 1845 and they have so much cool, historical stuff at the HQ. It was awesome! They also have a lot of cool historical/influential members (i.e.the author of the serenity prayer was an Alpha Sig!). I’m looking forward to going back tomorrow. We’re also going to be going over some fundamental LC training stuff at our HQ that I think is going to be very helpful.

Thursday, July 31, 2008
Today Nicole and I had part 2 of the “workshop” workshop. It was different than I thought it was going to be, but I still learned a lot and had fun. At our HQ, this afternoon we talked about what goes into writing an action plan for a chapter and ironed out some details for our first few visits. I booked my first flight, which was rather exciting for me. I also spoke to a chapter advisor for one of the chapters that I’m going to be visiting, and that was quite overwhelming for me! She’s starting to get stressed out about recruitment and my visit and she kind of just unloaded it all on me. She was very nice about it, but it just came on a little thick for our first conversation. The chapter president for that chapter also called me, and my conversation with her was much more relaxing!

Christy interviewed a girl for the LC position in person today. She told this girl that even though her name is Allison, Nicole and I will most likely her Sherri. We got to meet her briefly; she seemed nice. Christy offered her the job and if she calls back and accepts then I guess she’ll be starting around the 17th. Then hopefully by the end of next week we’ll have our travel schedules for the rest of the semester. Our training is starting to get more intense. This excites me because hopefully I’ll start to feel more prepared. However, the more I learn, the more I realize that I have to do and the more anxious and overwhelmed I get. I know that HQ is going to have my back and I’m sure once I get past my first visit and get into a routine then I’ll feel a lot better about it all.

I got a package from home today. I was bummed that all it contained were my contacts, a book of checks and some bills. I wasn’t expecting anything else, but it would have been nice if there was a little note in there with them! Oh well. Today was day 4 in my morning workout routine. I didn’t make it to the gym today (I did go yesterday!) but it was honestly because all my workout clothes were dirty (no clean socks or sports bras is gross). But tomorrow is Friday which means that I’ll get in a really good workout! I’ve decided that I’m going to order some resistance bands. They’re small and light and I can carry them in my suitcase with me and do my normal morning exercises with them and get better results. I wasn’t very enthusiastic in my workout this morning, so maybe I’ll do a little more before I go to bed. Hannah and I have decided that we’re going to start keeping an interactive diet/exercise journal with each other, so I’m pretty excited about that.

I was planning on going to see Crystal in Iowa this weekend, but she never got back to me about the details, so I guess I’m just sticking around Indy for the weekend. I was invited to hang out with this guy Jamie, but I don’t know what we’re going to do. He’s a nice guy, but comes on kind of strong so I’m definitely bringing Nicole with me for whatever we do. I think next weekend we’re planning on going to Ohio to Cedar Point, which apparently is a really cool amusement park. I’m excited about it. Then, when we come back to Indy at the end of the semester to do our LC wind down, Nicole and I are talking about going to Chicago to see a musical before flying home.

I’m not doing so well with this Barak Obama book. Parts of it are really interesting, but parts of it remind me of reading a history book. I haven’t picked it up in about a week. Maybe this weekend…