[Althea]

Sorry for the wait! The early shift turned into an all-day shift when one of my coworkers called in sick. I guess they couldn't handle the heatwave. OTL Anyway, moving on!

I woke up bright and early on Saturday morning, about an hour before I'd set my alarm to go off. Milan wasn't there - she had a Saturday morning PE class - so I figured I might as well use the time to get a head start on getting ready. Believe me when I say that getting ready is a chore for me. My hair is decidedly odd - when I just leave it alone, it dries straight in some places, wavy in others, and curly in others. It's a pain in the butt, but as long as I keep up with taking care of it, it's not too bad. At the time I was growing it out to donate it and it was about midway between my bust and my waist. Looking back on it - yikes! There were some long hairstyles that looked okay on me, but they were all ones that I didn't exactly have the know-how to do myself. It was long enough to donate by then, so I really should have gotten a haircut that suited me better. I know it sounds vain, but Recruitment is a lot like a job interview - you don't want to let looking sloppy keep you from any opportunities. I really wish I'd realized that a lot sooner than I did.

At any rate, I grabbed my stuff from a shelf in the closet Milan and I were sharing and headed in to use the shower. At my school, most of the dorms have a suite system - you share a bathroom with the room next door to you, and they're always really really careful that people of the same gender are matched up that way (though there was some drama about a boy with a unisex name that's more often used as a girl's name, who didn't have a roommate, being roomed next door to a pair of girls on move-in day - yiiiiikes!). I hadn't really gotten to know either of my suitemates yet, but as luck would have it, one of them was out for an early-morning workout and the other one, Amy, was just coming in to use the bathroom as I walked in from the other side. Awkward! But we both kind of tried to laugh it off and went about our business.

I finished showering and went back to wrestle with my hair. To my surprise, once Amy heard the water turn off, she followed me into my room! I was kind of like "Um...?" and she asked what I was up to that morning, since... well.. apparently I have this habit of rolling around in my sleep, and I usually keep hitting the wall - and it turns out her bed's right on the other side. So she wasn't used to the thumping stopping so early in the morning. I told her I was getting ready for sorority recruitment and she was kind of quiet for a few seconds before she looked at my hair dryer, looked at me, and told me to come into her room so she could help me with my hair. I found out later that Amy wanted to go to cosmetology school, so I guess she thought that I was using was just not good enough. I took her up on her offer, and wow - she was just amazing. She tried out a couple of different styles once she'd blow-dryed my hair, and finally settled on one we both liked. By the time she was done, my alarm was going off in the other room, so I scampered back over to get dressed. We were told to wear things that we would be comfortable walking around in for Open House, since it's very casual - and extremely hot out that time of year.

I'm not going to lie; I gave more thought to my hair that day than I did to my outfit. A grey T-shirt with a butterfly design on one side a pair of loose-fitting jeans with tennis shoes probably didn't make the best impression. (Amy told me later that she was so tempted to throw out the shoes once she saw them, and actually tried to sneak into my room to do it!) I did have a necklace I was really proud of, though - my biological dad, who I'd always been pretty close to even though I hadn't seen him face-to-face in years, had sent me an antique key on a chain for my fourteenth birthday. Apparently the key used to belong to my grandma on his side, and that had belonged to her mom, and so on... she'd given it to my aunt, who'd held onto it in case she had any daughters, but she's only had two sons - so she gave it to my dad to give to me. I'm kind of surprised she didn't give it to my other uncle, who had two daughters, but they'd both been getting jewelry from the other side of their family for years, so maybe that was why. All I knew was I loved it. (And as an aside: It makes me so happy these days when I see key-necklaces. I love love love them. I have quite the collection now. XD)

With a little more time to spare than I thought I'd have, I went down to the cafeteria to have a nice, relaxed breakfast instead of the sit-down-for-ten-minutes-and-eat-quickly one I'd been planning on originally. Tessa was at her mom's house and was going to be eating there, so we didn't expect to see each other until the end of the day. Finally, it was almost 11:00... I cleared up and headed upstairs to one of the university meeting rooms to meet my Rho Chi group, excited and nervous all at once. I was the third girl from my group to get there, other than Amber of course, and we made small talk while we waited for everyone to arrive so we could get started. Once our entire group arrived, Amber gave us little gift bags - they were full of things like breath mints, mini-notepads, hard candies (she wanted to do chocolate, but was afraid that it would melt), and a pack of inexpensive bracelets for each of us. There was also a stack of notecards, on which we were to write our names and decorate them any way we wanted - we'd be handing these to the Rho Chis before entering each house so that they could give them to the actives, which I guess was our way of signing at each house we stopped at. I have this habit of doodling when I'm nervous, too, so I drew my face next to my name, which Amber said was really cute when she noticed. A few of the girls sitting next to me asked me to do them, too, while we were waiting, and I did.

Finally, finally, everyone was ready to go. Amber led us out with two other Rho Chi groups and their counselors, and they explained as we were walking that half of the sororities (Squirtle, Eevee, and Meowth) were on one side of the campus, facing out to the main road - these were the sororities with more "traditional" houses, meaning that they actually looked like houses instead of dorms. The other three (Pikachu, Bulbasaur, and Charmander) would be on the other side of campus, on the actual Greek Row and near some of the fraternity houses. A lot of the houses over in that area had been converted from ROTC housing awhile back - I don't remember exactly when. I remember being kind of surprised at that, and I remember not really being sure what to expect. Everything seemed like an adventure and I couldn't wait to get started. Neither could most of the girls in my group and in the other two groups. Even Julie, who was so quiet the day before, was chatting animatedly with some girls she knew from the other groups. I still think that it might have been possible, just maybe, to literally taste the excitement in the air.

Before we knew it, we were outside of our first house. Amber and the other two Rho Chis explained that we couldn't take our purses inside, so we should freshen up while we were waiting and drink some of the water that was set up in coolers - it was very, very hot out. We did so and ended up milling about outside the house for a few minutes until they instructed us to hand them our cards and line up in alphabetical order by last name. My last name starts with one of the first few letters, so I was close to the front but not the first one to go in. We lined up, the Rho Chis went up to the door, waited... and finally, at 11:30 on the dot, they knocked and immediately stepped back. The doors swung open, and we were ushered inside to...

Oh, yikes, this post is getting really long. I'm going to post this up now, type up my experiences at the other five, and then move the bit about the Eeevee Open House to the top of the next post once I get it up. Sorry for rambling so much!

EDIT: Ok, I've moved Eevee to the next post, along with the others.