As the world turns...

It seems as though time at Transy just skipped an entire weekend because of the sheer intensity of the events that transpired from Friday to Monday, yes folks I am talking about that special and very unique event of Woman's Greek Recruitment.

If you hadn't heard, Transy is very Greek and we are consistently ranked in the Top 10 universities with a "Major Frat and Sorority Scene" by The Princeton Review (this year we're #4.) When I first saw this during my online college search I was almost immediately turned off, I didn't want to be surrounded by pretentious men and women prancing around campus sporting their letters, all looking the same and limiting their social circles to only include their brothers or sisters. Reminded by my mother that not all things are the way they may look on the outside, I went ahead with my investigation of Transy. So at the last possible moment before winter break I scheduled an overnight and was surprised to find that I wasn't meet any of the preconceived ideas I had about the students on the campus. Sure there were more Sperry's, J. Crew, and Vera Bradley than I was use to but I think that kind of goes along with the whole college scene right now.

After I got to campus, I still wasn't sold on the idea and I remained independent my first year, but as a sophomore I went through recruitment (check out my very first two posts,) pledged and later joined one of the awesome women's chapters on campus. (For the sake of anonymity, I'm not going to talk about my specific chapter, just know they're all amazing.) Since joining my chapter I have loved giving back through our philanthropic efforts, have fun at social events, and learning more from my sisters than I could have ever imagined.

The whole point of this story is that yes, Transylvania University is chalk-full of "Greeks" but because of many different factors we don't subscribe to school of thought that members of one chapter can't be friends with members of another chapter or for that matter that affiliated students can't be friends with unaffiliated students. Although there are many different organizations on campus, as cheesy as it may sound, we all really do identity ourselves as Transylvania students first and it was that unity that I finally saw during the course of my first year that showed me I could be whoever I want to be within or outside of a Greek organization.

If you have any further questions about Transy's Greek Life you should check out the website and remember to keep an open mind about the labels that are attached to every school you look at.

My sisters and me on the last night of recruitment

I hope everything's going swell for you! I think I may be getting sick, so I wish you all the best of health!

Heeeeyyy Yaaa! Hey Yaaa!

That's Hey Ya as in Outkast, if you're clueless about it still... youtube it. :)

Anyway... School has started, class is in session, and the [hypothetical] party has begun. Already this year looks like it's going to be quite an adventure. As I told you many moons ago, this year I'm tackling the Resident Assistant role and because of that I've been on campus for three weeks. Training was way intense but I'm glad of that because I feel ready for the year, or as ready as I can be. It's really interesting to be back in the realm of first years even as an RA, its very fun to watch my residents start to blossom into women away from their families. Move in was an exciting ordeal, watching all of the parents moving the "children" in to their dorms and eventually leaving them "under my watch."

One of the exciting things about being an RA is planning CBA's or Community Building Activities, already I've had two plus a hall meeting- our first CBA was "Speed Dating" with one of the boys halls, where the girls lined up and just talked for three minutes with all the guys. Our second activity was having Laina, the nurse, come to talk to the girls about the services she offers and good practices for remaining healthy. Another fun thing I got to do as an RA was to decorate my hall in whatever theme I wanted, I choose "Save our Earth" here are some pictures:

The first bulletin board, not so much about saving the earth, but background is made up of the scraps of my other projects (and is 100% recycled paper) and a reused calendar I found in the trash.

Second bulletin board, boasting most of the contents of my recycling bin, and useful info on: recycling, carpooling, and how to get involved at Transy.

Each of the rooms in Forrer has one of these little bulletin boards outside of them; on each of them is each roommate's name and a photo so everyone will know each others face.

There are a bunch of fun themes on the first year halls this year, there's a Dr. Suess's "Oh the Places You'll Go!" theme; a Survivor theme; a Saved by the Bell theme; and a bunch of other neat ideas.

I hope you all are starting your own school year off right and hope you're having some fun!

Till next time! Abby

PS. Since the city of Lexington is lame and thinks that people care about the Bengals ;) I didn't get to watch the Colts game today. But in case you didn't hear... they won!!

Summertime and the living is... hot!

So guys, this is what my summer has come down to, blogging. :) I know all of you anxious readers have just been hoping and praying that I would update on my summer adventures so here I am, making all your blogging dreams come true!

As I had talked about, I had been looking for a (paid) summer internship and I had thought I'd found one, but alas the Friday before I started they let me know that not only could have me in for 6 hours each week but they wouldn't be paying me either, because of my financial situation I declined their offer and started looking for another position. All the while I had been planning on working for the school nurse, Laina Smith, in the Student Health Services office. The plan had been to work in exchange for a room for the summer, but that supposedly violates the Fair Labor Standards Act, so I'm also getting paid, which is helping out with that pesky money thing. I had also applied to work for Dr. Moorman and Dr. LeVan for the Computer Science Summer Academic Camps, and they had offered me the job so that's three weeks of full time work, our first camp was actually last week.

This camp was an introduction to computer programming, for incoming 8th-12th graders. This was our only overnight camp and I'm thankful because anyone out there that has children, siblings, or even knows of anyone in this age group knows how much work we had in front of us. Oh yeah, there's one more thing, out of the 27 campers, we had one girl. Needless to say we had to work from the time we woke up, 7 AM, to the time we taped their doors at night, 11 PM. I don't think I've ever slept so soundly before in my life. The day was full of both academic and recreation sessions, all but one of which all three counselors had to be present for, but it was fun to talk with the kids and help some people see a side of computers they hadn't ever thought about before. Next week we start our first week of Day Camps for middle schoolers, and that will be Lego Robots, so that should be fun. :)

Dr. Moorman and some of the guys at the Intro Camp

Another cool thing about living on campus is that I get to hear about all the research that my friends are doing with their professors, which some people may have thought didn't happen at a school like Transy because our professors aren't here to research they are here to teach and because they like teaching. But I guess in the summer they are given an opportunity to work with students to share in research. I'll have to ask around about some of the projects and get back to you on that.

I hope that you guys are having a good summer so far, going on adventures or working to save money for college. :)

The rest of the trip...

So, I'll give you a quick run-down of the rest of the trip:

Day 2: Italy - We had most of the day to ourselves to explore the city, then we went back to the hotel for dinner and then we had our first concert in a church outside of Venice. The priest who organized the concert was really nice and we were invited to a party after the concert with some of the rest of the church members.

The Grand Canal and Rialto Bridge

Day 3: Traveling - Bled and Ljubljana (Lub-li-anna) We set out on the road in our bus really earlier this day and drove for a little while, got a little bit lost and found ourselves in Austria, then ended up in Slovenia. We took a lunch break in a little town in the mountains called Bled that had a picturesque little lake complete with a castle and a island (the only one in Slovenia!) We got to spend a couple hours exploring the town and then we got back on the bus until we got to Ljubljana. We had an independent dinner and explored the city a little bit and enjoyed our four star hotel.

The Bled Castle

Day 4: Ljubljana - We went on a tour of the city which included a ride up the top of the mountain and the city's castle where we could see the whole city. We got a free afternoon and then we had dinner at the hotel and then we put on our concert. A bunch of us went out and enjoyed the city after the concert.

The city's mascot is a Dragon and one of their bridge's has four Dragons guarding it.

Day 5: Loooong Travel Day - We spent nearly 9 hours on the bus, stopping for a quick lunch at a coastal town in Croatia. We got to our hotel, which was not very nice, and had dinner at the hotel we all were pretty tired and there wasn't much to do around our hotel so we went to bed pretty early.

The Adriatic Sea, which we drove along for a good part of the day

Day 6: Split - Today we got up early and rode the bus into town for our tour. We then had the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon to ourselves which we used to explore and do a little shopping. We got back on the bus to hotel and had dinner and got ready for our concert, which was in the oldest Roman-Catholic Cathedral in the world! It was a little small but it was really interesting and a very cool experience.

The cathedral we sang at, the Cathedral of St. Duje

Day 7: Travel to Dubrovnik - After another day of travel along the coast we got to the city and then to our hotel where our whole group got put into a villa and the hotel was only a 2 minute walk from the sea. We played in the sea for a little bit and then went to a grocery to get sandwich making and we had a little picnic on our balcony. We explored the area around our hotel a little and enjoyed spending some time with all of the people on the tour.

The main hotel, Grand Hotel Park, as seen from our Balcony

Day 8: Dubrovnik - We rode the bus into Old Town, which is all inside of walls, really tall walls that go all the way around the city with only two entrances. We met our guide, Bozo, who was pretty awesome and got a tour of the city. Then we were given tickets to walk around the city on the top of the walls, which was quite an experience, we started walking around the sides next to the ocean, which I really enjoyed and then the sides on the land side got really high and I got pretty nervous and didn't venture very close to the edge. After a nice long lunch by the harbor we caught the city bus back to the hotel and showered and got ready for the concert. We got to sing at the church in the middle of the city, which was really neat. We sang a preview outside of the church before our concert.

The City walls and the Sea from the top

Day 9: Dubrovnik/Lokrum - We got to go to this awesome island off the coast, we hiked up to the top and we could see the whole island and the whole city of Dubrovnik. We spent the day jumping off cliffs into lagoons and playing on the rocky shore. For me this was the best day because we just got to relax and enjoy ourselves. We had our last dinner at the hotel and a little ceremony for our guide, tour bus, and seniors.

The lagoon - We jumped off that cliff, awesome

Day 10: Back to America - A LONG day of travel, we woke up at 3:45 to get to the airport in time for our flight then flew from Dubrovnik to Frankfort, Germany then ran through the airport to get onto our flight then after 8 hours we got to Chicago where it was raining so our 7 hour layover turned into a 9 hour one, we didn't get to Cincinnati till 11:30 and didn't get back to Transy until 1:15 in the morning.



It was def a whirlwind trip, but I'm wouldn't trade anything for the experience, the Transy May Term Trip is something everyone should experience and there's so many really cool places to go for different classes. I had friends go to Spain and France, Greece and Turkey, and Ireland. I'm sure there were other places too, there's always great opportunities.

I'm baaack!

That's right folks, your's truly is back from her whirlwind European Choir Tour! Let me say, it was warm, sunny, and didn't even think about raining the entire 10 days we were there. The plane rides, both there and back were long and kind of stressful but the trip was well worth it. We left Transy around 6 in the morning and drove to the Northern Kentucky Airport for our flight to Chicago, once we got to Chicago we had a 5 hour layover until we left for Frankfort, Germany. Once we got to Germany we had to race through passport control and security and just barely got to our flight to Venice in time to board it. When we landed in Venice we had to wait for everyone to find their luggage and to exchange their cash for Euros, and then we finally got to get on the bus to see Venice.

As you may imagine, we all had hoped to be able to go to the hotel freshen up, rest a little before we began our explorations but no, we went straight from a nearly 24 hour trek to being plopped down in the middle of Saint Mark's Square in Venice to find lunch in a place where we didn't know the language. Needless to say, this first day started off to be quite overwhelming and didn't slow down because we got a guided tour after our lunch break. We all were interested to hear the history of the place and excited to be in Italy, but I know that I personally was almost too tired to really appreciate everything that our guide was saying.

St. Mark's Sqaure, this doesn't come close to illustrating how many people were there.

After our tour, we got a chance to go see a demonstration of Murano Glass Blowing, one of Venice's most famous art forms. And then, finally, we got to go to our hotel. I'll update you on the rest later!

The final countdown!

So this is it, right? One day until you (that is if you're a senior) have to give your decision to your college. I didn't wait until quite the last day, but it was late April by the time I had decided. Since I'm from Indiana, so I'm not sure what schools people are looking at, but I had it narrowed down to Purdue, Rose Hulman and Transy. I had to wait to make my decision until I had the financial aid info from all of them and heard back on scholarships and so forth. Even though Purdue is a state school since I wasn't the valedictorian or a National Merit Scholar, I didn't get any merit based aid from them and since my parents make enough money I didn't get very much Federal aid for Purdue either. Rose Hulman did a pretty good job making sure that I would be able to attend, but I would have left with a substantial student loan to pay off. Transy obviously loved me best :) because I got a pretty good scholarship from them and some other aid.

Ultimately, I decided against Purdue for financial and some other reasons (half of my graduating class was going there and I needed a change of scenery) and I decided against Rose Hulman because I wanted a little bit more diversity in curriculum and it just wasn't my scene. So Transy it was, and Transy it is. I just hope that you all pick the school that's right for you, not because someone tells you that you should go there with them or because your parents think that this school would be best. Look at the thing from all angles, you'll find the right one for you. :)

Here's a throwback to Orientation Weekend last year, a bunch of us sitting on one of the Transy Signs

Well enjoy your weekend, and do something fun with your friends! Adios.

For the longest time...

Hey dear readers! Sorry it's been so long but with finals and May term break, I got off schedule in the blog writing department.

My grades for winter term ended up alright. I was kind of afraid of my Computer Organization class because I had missed a week when I was sick at the beginning of the semester and had gotten a behind, but I pulled out a solid C in that one, this was only the second C I've ever been happy to get, the other being in Chem I, that class was def not for me. I did well in all of my other classes, A, A-, B+ so I was pretty happy with that. My finals week seemed to drag on forever since I only had one each day, but it finally ended and I got to go home for May term break to celebrate my Dad's 50th birthday. My mom threw a "surprise party" that wasn't much of a surprise because you can't really get our house ready without someone knowing, but there were aspects that he didn't know so I suppose it was a surprise-ish party.

My Dad's Birthday Cake (I decorated it!)

So we're all back at Transy and enjoying May Term. Since I'm going on the choir tour, we have rehearsal from 9-12 every day (M-F) until we leave, which is a week from today!!!! We're singing several songs from throughout the year and we also have 5 or 6 new songs that we are learning, one is in Slovenian and one is in Hebrew, so we're working hard to get down the pronunciation on those two. Friday we are giving a concert (at 7:30, Old Morison Chapel if you're interested :D) of all of the same things that we will be singing on the tour.

I'm getting really, really excited about the trip. I looked up the hotels we're going to be staying in and I've started on my packing list and I'm just ready to get on a plane and be there. :)

Our First Hotel, Park Hotel Villa Marcello Guistinian, outside of Venice

That's all I have for now, but expect to hear from me again soon. Arrivederci!