Never Fear those Mountains in the Distance

From Kansas, I flew over to Denver, Colorado, to visit a chapter at Johnson & Wales University.  The journey to Denver was interesting.  My flight from Kansas City was delayed and it was pretty bad because I got there pretty early to begin with and it’s a pretty plain terminal.  But Kansas City has free WiFi, so I passed the time instant messaging some friends.  My Frontier flight to Denver was delightful. Normally I like to use travel time to keep to myself, think, read and/or sleep, but there was a nice lady on the flight who chatted with me for almost the entire flight. We talked about everything from Chicago to my job to her grandchildren.  She was so fascinated by my job and excited for me to travel so much to do what I do.  She mentioned her daughter is a sorority alumna, so I have a hunch that her daughter’s experience helped her understand a little more.  It was nice to meet someone new and chat.  When we got off the plane, she even introduced me to her daughter and granddaughter.

In Denver, I stayed with one of the chapter’s advisors. She is about my age going through some of the same things as I am, so it was very nice to meet and connect with her. She also has a really cute dog who made my stay that much more enjoyable.  Johnson and Wales University is different than any school I had visited before.  Many of the students there are in the culinary or hospitality industry, and the school is on trimesters.  The historic appearance of Johnson and Wales in Denver is deceiving.  Many of the buildings seem antiquated, but the school is only about 10-years old.  The school, which has campuses in Florida, Massachusetts, and North Carolina, purchased the land and buildings and made them its own.  Though it doesn’t matter who built the buildings, it’s neat to know a little bit more of the background.

Loved the blue lights!

A newly remodeled common space in a residence hall.

After some days of meeting with the chapter members and advisors, the chapter planned a sisterhood day in Boulder – which is beautiful! First we went to Celestial Seasonings Tea Company.  The factory was so interesting! We first walked into the tasting/waiting area, where there are tables, historical exhibits, and a counter where patrons can taste ANY of their teas. The Celestial folks would give ever patron a little tea cup and we would just walk up to the counter and state which we wanted to try.  It reminded me of wine tasting, only free and more inclusive because there is no need for a designated driver – so really, it’s better!  If I remember correctly, my favorites were the India Spice Chai and Honey Vanilla Chamomile. The only one I didn’t like was the Gingerbread Spice; I guess it wasn’t my cup of tea!

History of Celestial Seasonings

Where patrons are welcomed with free tea samples

Interesting tea kettles

More information on the company

Candid photo of the women

Posing with Sleepytime Bear

Before the tour departed for the factory, we all sat in a private room and watched a short video on the history of the company.  Though I don’t remember much, it was interesting to see the older photos of the company and hear about how popular the company is.  Most of their business is done in North America, which makes sense not only because of geographic location but also because many other countries where tea is popular produce their own.  It’s common sense, but I never really thought about it. They serve 1.6 billion cups of tea every year and source more than 100 different ingredients and herbs from over 35 countries to create their teas.

The tour of the factory began where the botanicals and teas arrive. They are then quality checked and then sent off to the blending department where giant mixers tumble the herbs together.  Then the herbs are sent off to packaging.  A special machine places the blend onto their own tea bagging paper which is sealed with a second layer – forming their unique stringless, tagless pillow bag.  The bags are then packaged into boxes and placed onto pallets for shipping.  Again, if I remember correctly, I believe they have two different boxing sections – one for tea being shipped in North America and one for tea being shipped across seas.  

Tea is actually a very interesting beverage with a boat-load of history behind it. Part of me wishes to become a tea connoisseur someday.  Some other fun things I learned while there:

• Sleepytime, a soothing blend of chamomile, spearmint and lemongrass, is their number one seller.

• Mint herbs are kept in a special “mint room” because if they are kept where the other herbs are kept, everything would taste like mint!

• It’s not recommended to add milk to fruity teas because milk, a base, neutralizes the acidity of the fruit and takes away from the taste.

After our tea extravaganza, we went pumpkin picking at a local pumpkin patch. I didn’t purchase anything, but they had locally produced honey that I was thinking about. Looking back, I wish I would have bought it; I could have added it to my Sleepytime tea.

Can you even imagine this is the view the WHOLE time you're driving down the road?!

Cute country landscape all throughout the mountainous countryside

Simply breathtaking

A functioning tractor at the pumpkin patch

Pumpkin picking! (Again, just look at those mountains!)

Following the tour and pumpkin picking, we all went to a local shop in Boulder where fraternity and sorority members get their lettered shirts made.  This trip to an ordinary place was a little extraordinary because we were with the new members who were ordering their first set of letters.  The excitement was refreshing.   After this, the women took me on a brief driving tour through Denver just so I could see some of downtown.

Another place we went to dine (actually, I was lucky enough to go there twice during my visit) was Crepe and Crepe.  It was the most adorable little diner. The décor was amazing, almost as wonderful as the food! For breakfast I had a delicious crepe with pears and other sweet fixings.  When I went there a second time (for desert), I had a crepe with chocolate and Nutella. It was amazing.

Business picked up when we were there and it seemed like a pretty popular place.

This was so delicious!

Such a neat atmosphere! I felt so close to France.

I really lucked out with the timing of my visit.  It seemed like my visit was during the prime of the leaves changing colors.  All the trees were so bright and colorful, and the weather was the perfect fall temperature. Also to my surprise, the change in altitude didn’t seem to affect me.  I don’t know if I didn’t notice because I wasn’t working out in the elevation or if it’s because my body didn’t really feel a change.  Either way, it was nice not having an adjustment period.  Looking ahead, I could definitely see myself living in Colorado and breathing in the mountain air every day.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit with the women and the journey to Colorado.  The women were wonderful to me, and I feel like I brought some resources to them so they could continue to move forward. Hopefully I’ll get to visit them again.

P.S.  I visited Colorado in October.  Yes, I’m aware it’s now January into 2012; however, updating more regularly is a New Year’s resolution of mine. Wish me luck!

Kansas: It's about the People

I’m prefacing this post with the fact that about half of it was typed with one hand, so please excuse the lack of normal excessive details and possible typos.

In the beginning of October, I had the privilege of traveling to Emporia, Kansas to work with a chapter who was recently installed in December.  I flew from PIT to MCO (the code for the Kansas City airport, which is strangely enough not in Kansas but is rather in Missouri) with a connection in Cincinnati, OH (CVG).  Ohio is not my favorite state, and CVG is surely not my favorite airport – it’s going to be placed low on my list of favorites.  When I got to MCO, the chapter women came to pick me up. From there, we had about a 1.5 hour ride back to Emporia, Kansas. Our ride was pretty long, so for our first time meeting each other, we had to really think of some conversation starters. Luckily, all three of the women who came to pick me up were really great people so conversation was very easy. For the week, one of the chapter women gave up her room, which included a full sized bed and a private bathroom. They were so accommodating and I’m so grateful for their hospitality.

Emporia State University – an institution known for is education program – was very comforting as it reminded me of my alma mater in the sense that it was a small, close-knit community where everyone knew everyone else.  Two members gave me a tour, and it made me happy that the women who were giving me a tour knew some history about their college and some of the traditions it had. 

For example, the school mascot, Corky the hornet, was designed by Paul Edwards in the 1930s, then a freshman art student and cheerleader.   ESU’s mascot has undergone several changes through the years; however, Corky retains what Edwards calls that “determined, but happy” look on its face.  The women informed me that Edwards is still involved with the school and is the only person who is allowed to change anything about Corky. Since I like alumni things, this was delightful to learn.

Another thing they shared with me was the tradition of people becoming engaged or, in cases of Greeks, lavaliered. The bridge is over a little pond with a fountain and during Greek Week, the have a canoe competition.  It’s a very nice touch to campus.

Below is one more tradition the school has. The students, as incoming first-years, walk through this arch during their academic convocation and are to find it bad luck to walk the opposite way through the arch until their commencement. I guess many students don't take it seriously except for the art and theatre students.  Just another interesting thing about ESU.

I must admit it was a little scary being in Kansas – a state notorious for deadly tornadoes. The weather for most of my visit was fairly nice, though while I slept one night, it was severely thundering and lightning. In a half-sleep as I feared for my life, I somehow managed to not only check my phone’s weather application, but also set it to the nearest National Weather Service station since it was still set to Buffalo weather.  Obviously the fear carried deep into my mind.

Something very interesting -- and something I somewhat expected -- was its lack of dining choices.  Emporia's "hot spot" is Applebee's, which I frequented at least three times during my week-long visit.  Although during one of the Applebee's trips, Allison (a colleague based in Indianapolis who was visiting for the chapter's alumnae reunion) and I met a staff member of a fraternity.  It was neat talking to a new friend who has some similar and also some different experiences.  Anyway -- back to food. We dined locally twice and ate in a few times.  One of the places we ate at was Bobby D's BBQ. I'm not much into BBQ, but the turkey open-faced sandwich and sweet potato fries were muy delicioso! It was definitely my favorite place we dined.

The visit with the women was great.  The chapter was re-installed last December, so they are still learning some things and it was nice to be there help with some things.  I was also there for their initiation, so that is always a special time.  The school’s fraternity/sorority adviser actually came to introduce herself to the entire chapter and do a small activity with them – which I added to my activity toolbox. It’s an activity where each member has an envelope with her name on it and all members had a stack of sticky notes.  Then everyone passes each other’s envelope to one direction in sync and wrote something nice about one another and put it in their envelope as that person’s envelope came around to them.  And these nice messages are not “she’s so cute – I love her shoe collection!” things, but deeper things about what they appreciate, admire, like or love about one another.  Once each member has written in everyone else’s and has hers returned to her, (my favorite part) they seal their own envelopes and save the nice messages for a lousy day pick-me-up. Telling them they cannot read the messages right then and there is definitely the highlight of the activity. Muah-ha-ha-haa.

Kansas really surprised me.  At first, I was judging it by it's geography and lack of things to do.  But then one of the chapter alumnae (who owns an ostrich farm!) said the secret to Kansas:  It's not about the area; it's about the people.  It's so true, too.  Any memory made wasn't revolving around where we were or what we were doing, but it was mostly about the people.  And having Allison's familiar face there for a short amount of time was very comforting. It's nice to be around colleagues every now and then!

Buffalo Wrap Up -- Finally!

Okay, so. I guess it has been a long, long time since I’ve last updated. Updating is difficult to remember and just sit down and write. Since the last post, I have left the Buffalo, NY area and have moved on to Kansas. But before I get into what’s happening in Kansas, I first have to finish up with some fun things I did in Buffalo.

Before I departed from the Queen City, I was fortunate enough to have visited the American side of Niagara Falls.  Even though it was dark out, it was still a pretty neat experience.  We walked on trails that were so close to the river that goes over the falls; we were so surprised that no boundary or protection of any sort was there.  After we walked around the falls, we had some Indian food for a late-night dinner. It was delicious and a much needed evening out with some college friends and sorority alumnae.

Something else fun that I had the luxury of doing while in Buffalo was dining at Pizza Junction, as seen on the Food Network’s Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.  My mom saw it on there and immediately told me about it.  Apparently they were featured on the Food Network for their pulled pork pizza, rueben pizza, and beef on weck pizza.  I had none of these; I think I just had a regular pizza with mushrooms and some chicken wings. But it was just as delicious, if not more, than the fancy specialty, loaded-up-on-meat pizzas. My only complaint is that when I ordered, my meal was supposed to cost around $8.00; however, when I received my check, the price was $10.00. When I addressed the waitress, she went to the server's area and compared menus. She then informed me that she must have given me the outdated menu because they raised some prices. But me being myself, I just paid the extra two dollars and didn't put up a fight. But seriously -- not my problem you don't update you entire stock of menus at once and misinform customers of meal prices. It was still a good experience despite this.

The day I left Buffalo, some friends and I stopped and ate at Duff’s.  Duff’s is apparently has the best wings, not the original- but the best. Established in 1969, it has taken over the world of wings – or at least Buffalo and Southern Canada.  The wing flavor selection was mildly disappointing, because they only really had mild, medium mild, medium hot, etc. There were no fun flavors like Cajun, ranch, or parmesan.  And it took a very long time for us to get our checks, so that didn’t impress me much either. But it was good to experience.

On my last night in Buffalo, the women took me out to dinner at El Palenque, the Mexican restaurant we went to on my first night in Buffalo.  It was kind of neat to see it all come full circle. Only with this dining experience, it wasn’t awkward because we had known each other for a month and not just a half-hour. So the conversation was a lot more casual and more relaxed. One of the women studied abroad in Spain in the spring and is fairly fluent in the language. It was delightful to hear her speak to the restaurant waitstaff in Spanish and to see her continue to practice the language.

Now that my first visit is over, I feel like some mistakes have been made on my end and some things have been learned. There are things I would have done differently, but you live and learn. I’m glad my first visit was stationary for a few weeks, rather than on the road constantly. It was a good transition after being so situated and stable in  my itsy-bitsy apartment.

I’m happy to say that when I left the group of women, things were looking good. The visit definitely went quickly—a lot faster than I was expecting.  But I think that I left them with the tools and resources they need to do good things, and I’ll be talking with the president every week, if not more than once a week, and other officers to see how things are progressing.  During my five week visit, we definitely had our ups and downs, but I think it made us all stronger in the end—them as a group and me as a consultant. There were probably times where they wanted to kill me, and I also got frustrated at times, but I hope they learned a lot and that they do good things.

Profile: University at Buffalo

Established in 1846, University at Buffalo, which is often referred to as UB, is a public research university and a flagship university of the State University of New York (SUNY) system.  Having multiple campuses and offering 84 bachelor’s, 184 masters, and 78 doctoral degrees, it is the largest of the four comprehensive university centers within the SUNY system.  UB is also considered the largest public university in the northeastern United States (comprising New York and the New England region).

The campuses are broken into North Campus and South Campus.  South Campus is much smaller than North Campus and is generally a medical campus.  The South Campus is also home of the WBFO radio station.  Even though most of the classes and activity occurs on the North Campus, about 20% of UB’s resident population continues to live in the original complexes located on the South Campus.

In 2004, President John B. Simpson created a massive strategic planning initiative called 2020.  Some of the goals are to add approximately 10,000 more students, 750 faculty members, and 600 staff members.  The strategic plan also recognizes the university’s contribution to the surrounding region, since most recent estimates report UB brings $1.5 billion into the local economy.

After having only been here a little over a week, I’m quickly learning how to get around the area.  The campus is very large! I’m not very impressed with it in terms of infrastructure or parking. Actually, the parking situation is nuts! I guess it’s not that much crazier than when I was in school, but I often times didn’t have to drive to campus and find parking in the middle of prime class hours—so maybe that has something to do with it. I was tempted to pull out my Penn State Faculty/Staff parking permit, hang it from my rear view mirror, and park in the faculty/staff lot, as if I were a special visitor. I would take the risk of getting a ticket if I believed even faculty and staff members have good parking available. It’s just crazy. 

In my opinion, the student culture here is much different than what I have been privileged to experience as an undergraduate.  One major way that it differs is that student organizations don’t seem to work together much; it seems more like one against the world.  I don’t think that was the case at Penn State Behrend -- most groups had members in other organizations and those in fraternity/sorority life were involved in many other groups.  The student life was pretty good at Behrend; it was -- and felt like -- an actual community. Perhaps the disconnect at UB stems from the large size of the school and the two campuses. Or maybe it is because they don't share a common pride for something.  From what I’ve heard, football games aren’t that big of a deal (and when you have a Division 1 team, they should be). I can’t put my finger on it, but I just thought I would see more happenings around campus considering the large amount of students here and the start of an exciting school year. Who knows... different folks, different strokes.

Like I said, Buffalo does have a Division 1 football team, which is exciting!  The Buffalo Bulls played (and lost to) the Pitt Panthers this past weekend, unfortunately at Heinz Field, but they will be hosting the UConn Huskies while I’m still here. I think it would be fun to go to a football game, even though the students say that football isn’t really taken seriously here.  But I would still like to experience it and see what all the fuss isn't about. So we’ll see what will shake out.

Oh, and University at Buffalo’s colors are blue and white. Awe.

Alumni on the Fly -- University at Buffalo

Notable alumni from University at Buffalo (starting with my favorite!):

Alan Zweibel ’72 is a comedy writer and one of the original writers for Saturday Night Live.

Wolf Blitzer ’70 is an award-winning journalist for CNN.

John Walsh ’65 is the host of America’s Most Wanted.

Ira Flatow ’71 is a science journalist and the current host of NPR’s Science Friday.

Abbe Raven ’74 is the CEO and President of A&E Television Networks and founder of the History Channel.

Nancy Nielsen ’76 was president of the American Medical Association.

John Alm ’73 is a former CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, while UB is currently a Pepsi campus.

Gregory Jarvis ’67 was an astronaut in the Challenger space shuttle.

Jeremy Jacobs is the owner of the NHL hockey team Boston Bruins and CEO of Delaware North Companies.

Mark Huddleston ’72 is the president of the University of New Hampshire.

John Hewitt is the co-founder of Jackson Hewitt and founder of Liberty Tax service.

Brad Grey ’79 is an American television and film producer and CEO of Paramount.

Millard Drexler is the CEO of J. Crew and former CEO of Gap Inc.

I had to narrow down the original list to the most interesting and noteworthy, but even on the original list, there were not many women. I’m sure all of these guys are doing good things in the world. But where are the ladies?!

Weekend Update!

This weekend was a great one in Buffalo, NY.  On Friday night, Alanna picked me up and we went to a local restaurant in Buffalo, the Shadow Lounge.  The food was delicious! I got the buffalo chicken macaroni and cheese, a key lime martini, and we shared a chocolate fondue. The walls and tablecloths were red while the accents were black. The waitresses were all tattooed up and had piercings—it was a pretty bold place. There was a band playing some awesome tunes too.  It wasn’t your typical rock and roll band though; this group had a saxophone and a trombone (I think?) and they were playing Santana and some other oldies.  People were dancing and having a great time! It felt so good to catch up with Alanna and to just chat about things.  We also discussed the advisory board positions for the colony I’m working with, and I was happy to hear she was interested in looking into it! I told her that if she didn’t introduce me (aka force me to look into) the sorority, I wouldn’t have the job I do now. It’s funny how things work out. 

After dinner, we went downtown and drove past the Peace Bridge (which connects  Canada to the United States).  It was lit up in red and blue colors for Labor Day weekend.  Downtown, we visited the memorial for President McKinnley.  He was shot on September 6, 1901 at the Pan-americ Exposition, a world’s fair held in Buffalo. He died on September 14 due to gangrene from the bullet.

McKinnley Memorial

City Hall

Peace Bridge

There were bugs all over this!!

On Saturday, two of the colony members invited me out to the 10^th Annual National Buffalo Wing Festival at Coca-Cola Field.  The festival celebrates “Buffalo Wings”, which have become a national food icon.  Invented in 1964 at the world famous Anchor Bar by Frank and Teresa Bellisimo, Buffalo, NY is the official “Home of the Chicken Wing.” Last year alone, over 13.5 billion wings were consumed by Americans, with 1.25 billion consumed on Super Bowl weekend alone.

In 2001, actor Bill Murray playing Frank Detorre starred in one of his notoriously eclectic movies entitled, “Osmosis Jones.” In this film, Murray played the part of an average Joe addicted to fried food and other arter-clogging fare, who was heading to Buffalo, NY for a chicken wing festival.  As everyone knew, there was no chicken wing festival in Buffalo at the time… well, at least not yet. 

Buffalo News columnist Donn Esmonde heard about the Murray movie and wondered why there wasn’t a festival.  Esmonde wrote a column suggesting there should be a festival and then Drew Cerza, festival founder and “Wing King,” made a plan and asked the community for support.  The past ten years for the festival was filled with 575,000 people, almost 3 million wings weighing more than 150 tons, 191 participating restaurants, $200,000 in charitable contributions and even a wedding ceremony.  Last year, the festival tracked visitors from all 50 states and 34 different countries. I was the first person this year to inform them they had a visitor for Pittsburgh! So they added a little pushpin to the map.

The Wingfest has drawn the attention of media throughout the world, including many appearances on CNN, the Travel Channel, the View, Regis and Kelly, the Food Network, and the Today Show.  It was also the subject for a PBS documentary.

The benefiting charities for 2011 are the Western New York Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and Meals on Wheels for Western New York.

It was a very neat experience. They opened up the Coca-Cola field, which is used for the NY Mets’ minor league baseball team, the Buffalo Bison. The tents were set up down on the field and people were allowed to sit up in the seating area.  They had a stage where they were hosting sauce-offs, eating contests, bake-offs, and more.  Duff Goldman for Food Network’s Ace of Cakes was also hosting something late in the day on Saturday.  They even have a Miss Buffalo Wing Pageant and a Jimmy Buffet tribute band. Sadly, no one I was with knew who Jimmy Buffet is. That troubled me.

With the exception of Timmy Ho’s cookies and coffee, there unfortunately wasn’t much to eat for people who don’t eat wings (but that is a given for a wing fest.)  Until Saturday, I hadn’t had wings in about a year. Then I caved. There were so many vendors from across the United States and so many different types of sauces, and I just got caught up in the moment and the “living the culture” attitude. Oh well, decision made.  Two of my favorite sauces were Mango BBQ from Hurricane Grill & Wings (AZ, FL, IN, MI, NY, OH) and Jamaican Jerk from Fire on the Mountain Buffalo Wings (Portland, OR).

I did a load of laundry yesterday, and realized that within about a month’s time, I have done laundry in three different states. Woo. I tried for the first time the detergent/dryer sheets, and my clothes weren’t very fresh-smelling. AND I only had a $10 bill on me, so I ended up getting $10 in quarters for one load of laundry. That was a good time.

This morning, some of the women and I went shopping for recruitment and publicity supplies.  We have an event tonight where we will be making “save the dates” for recruitment events and talking about how recruitment has been going thus far.  I am looking forward to a little more relaxed event with the women. 

90 East to Bu-, Bu-, Buffalo

Last week was my last week at home and last weekend was my last in Erie for a bit.  My last week at home was filled with some quality time with Faith and family, and then I headed up to Buffalo, while staying in Erie for two nights to see some friends before it seems like I fall off the face of the earth. The weekend in Erie was wonderful! It was exactly what I needed to begin this string of chapter visits, and I wouldn’t have traded any minute of it. Except my favorite place downtown was not living up to the high standard it set for itself over the past two years. Who cares if I got tackled and didn’t hear Sweet Caroline or Living on a Prayer (as usual)? When the company is good, what you’re doing and where you are matters less. It was probably one of the best weekends I've ever had.

Before I left Erie for Buffalo on Sunday, I stopped by my collegiate chapter’s car wash fundraiser for some support, but mostly for a car wash ;-)  Then realized my car’s left turn signal was broken! So after a trip to the auto shop (and being told it would be an hour’s wait to get it fixed), I met a nice man at Auto Zone who showed me which bulb I needed and even installed it for me. Now that I know what to do, I won’t freak out as much next time. It’s definitely less complicated as I thought it would have been, but there was no way I was driving to Buffalo without a turn signal.

When I arrived in Buffalo, five of the women gave me a delightful tour of their campus, went with me to grab some supplies for the upcoming events, and took me to dinner at El Palenque Mexican Grill – which was very similar to El Canelo, minus the gaudy décor. After I got back to the hotel, I put on SNL and ironed just about every article of clothing I brought (which was a massive amount since I had the ability to drive and the luxury of what seems like limitless space). The hotel staff has been nice and accomodating; however, I think they are tired of continuously providing me more hangers.

Megan, another of the three consultants, arrived on Monday, and we got some more supplies and lunch.  We then prepared for the evening’s program—where we met the women as a whole, introduced ourselves, set expectations for both parties, and began with the first education lesson. It was a good meeting, but I recognized some things I can do better for the upcoming education lessons.

Since Megan was leaving Thursday, we decided to take a few hours and visit Niagara Falls on Tuesday. Megan had never been there before and the women were mostly in class all day, so we took a few hours off to sightsee. I never realized how close Buffalo was to the falls!

The rest of Tuesday was spent meeting with women and planning for Wednesday’s recruitment workshop.  It was fun and I think the women had a good time and learned some valuable skills! Megan ran a lot of the program, since she’s great with motivating others to recruit. I chimed in and facilitated the portion about examining the values the women are looking for in potential new members and if those align with what our organization stands for. They hit it spot on and it seems like they had a good time reminding themselves about the type of women they’re seeking for the organization.

Last night we had a sisterhood program.  During the event, I threw in some things I picked up along the way, both from training and from being a collegian.  I had the women send me an email stating something they like about each and every member, and then I compiled them all on a pretty piece of letterhead and distributed them at the end of the night.  Unfortunately, in the commotion of working the printer and MS Word 2003 in the hotel’s “business room,” I accidentally printed them upside down! I don’t think anyone will really notice, but that’s just a great example with my attention to detail some (most) times.  This was something we did in our chapter, and as I was packing up to move out of my old apartment, I found mine. It brought a huge smile to my face and almost brought tears to my eyes to read again what nice things everyone had to say about me.  I told the women I want them to have these memories and feelings flood back to them as they stumble upon this paper when they're packing up to move onto another chapter in their lives. Along with that, we also did a Post Secret activity where everyone got a notecard and anonymously wrote down a secret, either funny or serious, and I read them aloud.  That's a neat activity to do, even in a group where members think they know everyone extremely well.  There is always someone who catches you off guard and throws a curveball secret.  Everyone seemed positive after the event; in my opinion, anything ending with a power clap and a group hug is a good thing!

After a little under a week on the job, I'm liking it and can already see some good things happening.  I'm looking forward to the coming weeks.