Chapter Retreats
 

Tell us about your chapter retreats. Where do you hold them? What are some of the fun sisterhood activities you include?

My chapter used to hold our retreat in the gym of the Education Building. We would play a lot of getting-to-know you games and learn songs, review sororitiy policies, etc. We would also plan pride activities in our new prides. We woud start things off at the ADPi house, where our president stood in front of us with a huge easel board and together, we would all plan our chapter's goals for the year (#1 GPA, First Place at LXA Watermelon Bust, Raise $10,000 for RMH, Plan More Events with our Alumnae this fall, Wear Our Letters Every Wednesday, etc)

Also---Each pride would make up an original ADPi song about their pride (One semester our pride theme was "Flowers" and "The Creed." I was one of "Christy's Courageous Crysanthemums." Our song was to the tune of "Do a Little Dance, Make a Little Love, Get Down Tonight"-- I only remember the "Get Down Tonight" part where we would yell, "Crysanthemums! Yay! In ADPi!"-- the words were all about sisterhood and having fun together. It was so cute!). We'd sleep in sleeping bags by prides, and have a fun exit activity (One year we cut out huge purple violets and taped them to each others backs--you walked around and people wrote little notes to you on your violet-- it is a great sisterhood keepsake to see all of the positive things your sisters have to say about you!)

Anyway, enough of my trip down memory lane! Now my chapter goes to Daytona to a beautiful hotel on the beach where they not only hold retreat, but also hold a special diamond sis revelation on the beach as a candlelighting ceremony :)

My chapter has had chapter retreat at many different places. One year it was at one of the sister's parents cabin...another was in a rec room somewhere right off of campus...This years was supposed to be at the county fair grounds, but when we got there we found out they messed it up..I felt so sorry for the MEVP, since she had been planning it for so long...But we ended up spending the morning there playing games, going over standards policys, and then having lunch. After that we headed back up to the all greek res hall and had the rest of retreat in one of the conference rooms. There we played more games (human note, and leading people through a maze of alphies blindfolded (and it was up to people if they wanted to do that one...I know I didnt...I fall over my own two feet when i can see them))...also we continued a tradition in our chapter of having everyone's have a piece of paper with their names on it and it gets passed around and everyone rights something on it...It is really fun to see them by the end of the day...Umm...what else...we had dinner brought in from Garcia's which was really yummy (the nice part of a sister being the assistant manager there)...Umm...after dinner we did diamond sis revealing...where each diamond sis had decorated a bowl with their name at the bottom and the alpha was supposed to eat the ice cream and find out who it is...which is really really entertaining...and I think the deltas ate more of the ice cream for the alphas then the alphas ate...So after that the diamond sisters went off to get to know eachother...and at the same time the left over deltas were matched up to talk with someone else in the chapter that they dont normally talk to...it was really fun...after that we did a yarn web...where each member told a sisterhood or friend story and we passed around a ball of yarn till it made a web...it was really nice, and I believe showed our alphas exactly how close we really are...After that we had a candle passing and the night ended...It was decided this year not to do an overnight, because we had had issues in the past so we decided to try it not as one this year...It actually worked out really well going from 10am to 10pm...

As an ex-MEVP, I remember chapter retreats all too well....:)

The fall retreat that I planned was informal...not required, so we went to a local park and started off the day with Tootsie-Roll Pops, where depending on the flavor you pulled (Cherry, Blueberry, etc.), you had to say the same number of things you enjoy about being a sister of ADPi as there were letters in your flavor (so if you pulled Cherry, you would say 6 things you loved....Chocolate and Blueberry were always a lot of fun!) We also tie-dyed shirts that we brought from our "home" (dorm, apartment, etc) and then played on the playground at the park.

The spring retreat we held at a local church in their youth room (one of our sisters was a member of the church). We got together and actually did a sisterhood building activity led by our TCC before she left for another chapter, the usual standards presentation, we watched movies that night and slept overnight in the room, and then in the morning we revealed prides by doing a memory-type game.

Other retreats I went to were pretty similar when it was the spring retreat....preparing for elections or officer transition, meeting in prides, brainstorming ideas for Songfest, etc. The fall retreat was also a time to get things together for our informal recruitment (door decs, prides, etc).