When I woke up on Tuesday, I looked in my information book and read that I should wear 'casual, cool attire,' 'like shorts and a T-shirt.' Easy enough, I thought. So I put on shorts and a T-shirt.
We had 6 houses the first day and 5 the next, so I went to my group and immediately felt like an idiot. Nobody else was wearing a T-shirt, and although there were some shorts, I felt like a sore thumb! I wanted to go put on a tank top or blouse like most of the other girls were wearing, but we had to stay there. I was extremely uncomfortable in my attire that whole day. It might have come through in my conversations. We were sitting around playing icebreakers and waiting for the day to start, and I was trying to relax. Maybe my fashion faux-pas wouldn't be a huge deal.
Finally, the time comes for our first house,
Tanzanite House. So we head over, and my RC starts giving us a big speech. "These girls are so excited to meet you. They will be screaming, and dancing, and cheering. Don't be intimidated. They will all do it to you at every single house. Just smile and enjoy it." So now I'm super nervous, thinking that it is going to be like some kind of cheer camp or something (since I did Cheer for a short time in high school).
By now, pretty much everybody reading this forum has an idea of how it works, so I'm not going to wax poetic on how shocked I was at this whole process. I will say that the energy level was extremely intense.
Tanzanite House happened to be one of the loudest of the houses that day, I think, so it was a little overwhelming to get them first. Once I realized the screaming wasn't about to go away, and neither was the jumping, I did try to enjoy it.
Anyway, so we're in
Tanzanite House and I remember being so impressed with the inside of the house, thinking it was really nice. (This was my first real chance to see a chapter house, and it was a really good first impression.) I had a great conversation, I got to learn a little bit more about Greek Life and pledging, and I was feeling pretty good about everything. I remember after the major and school talk, the conversation turned to what I thought was relatively random topics, like dorm life, or Greek life in general, or what we did that summer. I remember being impressed with what the actives told me about the house's commitment to grades and studying. (A small part of me still assumed that all sorority girls were bimbos at this point, so for a house to express commitment to grades was hugely impressive to me... Later, I'd learn that most houses actually have a commitment to grades, minimum GPA, study hours, etc..) They told me about their big/little system, and then they told me a lot about house life, which was great since I didn't know much about that. The topic of Twilight came up, which (now that I look back on it) is a bad thing since I've always hated it... Nevertheless, I left feeling extremely impressed by this house.
The second house I went to was
Peridot House. This house was nice and I remember my first impression of it was positive. I enjoyed my time here, and their song really stuck with me throughout the day. However, I didn't remember much about this visit later. In my book I wrote down that we had talked about a few different things, but I couldn't actually remember having this conversation. I assume I had a good time but it wasn't particularly memorable for me.
After that, we headed to
Tourmaline House. I was impressed with this house from the minute we stepped in, thinking that it was cute, and when my active took me to a back room with a few other girls, I could actually hear the conversation, which was really nice, as opposed to yelling over so many other active/PNM pairs. I remember Twilight came up again. The one weird thing was that the girl I was talking to said that she never got into Twilight either, but when the next active came to bump her, she actually brought it up. "Oh, yeah, Cherry was just telling me how she doesn't like twilight. Cherry, this is my sister Nicole, and she loves Twilight." I was like, "WTF
Why would you do that!" The rest of the conversation revolved around school stuff. Despite the slightly awkward conversations, I left this house with a big smile. I felt like I had at least had nonboring conversations with the girls! I was really pleased with how it had gone, overall. (I'd later realize that some of those topics might not have been entirely appropriate, but probably better than the same generic 'whats your major hows your roommate' routine.)
After lunch, my group went to
Sapphire House. My biological sister had mentioned that this house was very "classy," and so I had high expectations based on that alone. I certainly wasn't disappointed. I remember that my conversations were not the best but that I thought they went nicely overall. We talked about my hometown, as one of my actives was from there too. We also talked about dorm life and life on campus, which I remember was a good conversation. All the actives I talked to were friendly and talking to them felt natural, as if I was having a conversation with friends. The topics weren't the best though... I guess overall it wasn't bad conversations, but it just didn't stand out in my mind. Still, I enjoyed myself here.
Directly after
Sapphire House, my group and I headed over to
Garnet House. I'd never heard much about them, and didn't know what to expect, but I was really impressed. The conversations here were generally decent, although a little bit awkward at times; once I mentioned a hobby I wanted to get into, and the active I was talking to happened to know a lot about it, so I promptly felt like an idiot since I didn't know much about it. I ended up talking about high school with some of the other actives. We had some conversation about life on campus (of course-- as it is like the most generic conversation ever, so what do you expect). I remember I had a short conversation about books with one of the girls. After this house I wasn't immediately in love, but I had enjoyed my time there nevertheless.
The last house of the day was
Emerald House. As my active led me into the room, I noticed that the supposed ambient lighting was just dim lighting, and I immediately felt that this house was creepy. But before I wrote this house off entirely, I talked to the actives, and ended up really falling in love, thanks to the following conversation:
Active: "So, you do Creative Writing, thats cool. Do you have any hobbies?"
Me: "It kind of goes with my major but I love reading."
Her: "Oh, cool! What do you read?"
Me: "I read all sorts of things. I like Harry Potter. But Twilight..."
Her: "Oh, I read Twilight. I was not impressed with it."
YES! That was epic and awesome! We also had the same conversation about campus life, and I had a chance to learn more about sorority life, so in the end I was loving this house without thinking that it was only 1 girl in the house I had just happened to be matched up to who didn't like Twilight either. It was a really good feeling, and a great note to finish the first day on. I went home, unpacked some more, and got into bed later than I probably should have.