I agree with everyone else - thank you for sharing such a wonderful story with all of us!

Thank you all for your kind words. It has been my pleasure to share my story with you, it was a little cathartic for me actually.
I understand that the University of Alaska now has 1 or two sororities! I wonder how the chapters are doing, does anyone know? When I was a student up there I asked the dean why there wasn't a Greek system. He said it was doubtful that would ever happen because no one would ever walk from a house to central campus when it was 20 or 30 below. He seemed to feel that the weather was the most prohibitive aspect of developing a Greek presence but that he would be supportive of it if I chose to contact Chi-O and inquire about a chapter at UAF. I never had the time to do so with school and tending my mother.

LOL, that's hilarious to me that he thought weather would prevent sororities. You could make the same kind of inane statement about Florida being too hot and humid for sororities, and that's obviously not true.

Last I heard there were at least two chapters at the University of Alaska.

Your story is very touching! I love how you stuck it through recruitment and found the perfect home!
I'm very honored to call you a sister. Wonderful story!

Anchorage is blessed with milder weather than much of Alaska due to the fact that it is a coastal city. The ocean currents help to moderate the climate, meaning winters are mild and summers do not get very hot. Fairbanks is in the interior, it is blessed with hot summers (90 dgs some days) but very, bitterly cold winters.

Class was never canceled unless it was 40 below at the airport. We were up on a hill and it was always colder where we were than at the airport so I skipped class a lot. I hate the cold weather! In elementary school we had to go outside for recess unless it was 20 below or colder. :eek: Sometimes it would snow at our high school football games! In the winter I could go for days without seeing daylight. It was dark when I went to school and dark when I went home after cheerleading practice! On Halloween I remember wearing snowsuits under my costume to keep warm. This is why I thought wearing shorts to class was so awesome!

So funny.

I grew up in Texas. I don't think we went outside for recess anytime it got below 40F.

Yeah, we were a bunch of wimps.

Lol yeah, being from California, I can say big ditto here. Below 40 sounds unbearable! That's like Tahoe!! :D

Great story!! Thanks for sharing :) Ill be sure to keep the moral in mind when im dealing with my Pi Chi group in a few weeks!

Enjoyed this story, very much. Thank you.

Haha, we've actually done that in Pennsylvania some years too! :D

awkward1, this was an amazing and touching story. I am sure any Chi-O would be proud to call you sister. And I realize this is many years later, but I am really sorry for the loss of your mom when you were so young (to me that's still way too young to lose your mom).

Great story with a great moral

Another moral is that Americans are appallingly ignorant about US geography:

I called Encyclopedia Britannica once, and asked for something to be shipped to Dover, Delaware. They said "I don't think FedEx ships there" (this is back when FedEx didn't ship everywhere).
I said "I'm certain they do - it's the capital"
They asked "The capital of what?"
"Delaware"
"What state is Delaware in?"

I was in an elevator in Boston with 2 Harvard MBAs. They said "are you going back to Philadelphia today? What airport are you flying into? New York?"
"Why would I fly into one of the New York airports? I'm flying back to Philly."
"Philadelphia has its own airport?"
"It's the fifth largest city in America - yes it has its own airport"
"Fifth largest!!! By what measure?!!!"
"Uhhh....population." Needless to say, my respect for Harvard MBAs plummeted, even though both these guys were from California, so their sense of geography was really West Coast.

Lastly, and most excusably, I've run into some funny reactions to living near King of Prussia PA. The woman on the phone replacing my AMEX card said that only one site was open Saturdays in Pennsylvania - did I live anywhere near...uh...uh...Queen of Persia?
"You mean King of Prussia?"
"Uh, yeah, I guess"

Done that a few times. What we most often would wear was a dry-cleaner bag over our costumes. It was clear and it helped to keep your costume dry.

I can't tell you how many times my southern relatives thought we didn't go to work when it snowed.

We always had to make our costumes waterproof. The garbage bags kinda ruined all the creativity one would put into the costumes...

Along with the geography line, People seem to forget that Oregon is in between California and Washington (YOU MEAN THERE IS SOMETHING SEPARATING THEM???) and that Oregon has coast (I thought it was in the midwest...)

I live outside Philly so I totally understand the "Queen of Persia!". My favorite is that I work in the town of Villanova. A secretary or admin called me from New York and asked what our address was so I gave it to her. She asked me to spell Villanova and I did. She repeated it back to me and it was wrong, so I corrected her, she spelled it back to me wrong again and I said "You know, Villanova, like the University". She goes "There is a University of Villanova? I didn't know Villanova was a state?"....OMG lady - No its not! I eventually got the package she was sending and Villanova was spelled Bilanova. It's lucky it even got here!

Other fun philly favorites - ask someone not from the area to look at the words Schuykill, Conshohocken, Uwchlan, or Tredyffrin and ask them to say it.