September In Seattle

UW Colony, University of Washington

I was excited to return to the city of Seattle because it is such a cool place. For anyone that has never been, UW is located in the University District and downtown is about a 20 minute bus ride or 10 minute cab ride south. Campus and the Greek community have that campus feel but "the Ave," which is two blocks away, still gives it an urban feel. The Ave is filled with fast food, lots of local Asian restaurants and a few shops. Also frequent on the Ave are homeless people. They don't usually do much but the "Ave rats" definitely gave me a bit of a scare. I don't think I would ever get used to that.

Switching back to west coast time was a bit of a struggle for me this week. I went to bed at 10 or 11pm every night and, without fail, woke up three times before my alarm each morning. But I got into my ritual and would venture down to Starbucks on the Ave every morning for my caffeine fix.

I really enjoyed the fun workshops that UW's recruitment chair put together for everyone. One of my favorite involved each woman drawing an enlarged version of a small square of AEPhi's insignia. When we put them all together it actually looked pretty good! We also had a lot of fun playing four square as recruitment questions game and drawing our ideal new members!

My contribution to the columns!

Oreo on a stick from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory

Monday afternoon I got the chance to go downtown and explore. I headed back to a couple places I knew from my last visit, like the original Nordstrom and Pike Place market, and then down to the waterfront.

I was super excited to stop at Ivar's Fish Bar to try the famous fish 'n chips I'd heard so much about! Ivar's has been a Seattle institution, with multiple locations (including the airport), since 1938. The Alaskan cod was fabulous and I recommend you stop in if ever in Seattle!

I walked around a ton and saw so much of Seattle. It was such a gorgeous day and I really enjoyed exploring such a cool city.

View of the city from Pier 62 on the Seattle Waterfront

The highlight of my trip was getting to attend the Phired Up presentation that UW Panhellenic put on for all the chapters. KJ McNamara was the speaker and I had met her over the summer during consultant training in Indianapolis so I was so excited to see her again. I pumped up all the women I was going to the program with and by the end of it they were all obsessed with her too!

KJ is hilarious and told some great stories that had the whole ballroom cracking up. I learned a new term for your closest friends that I love and am totally going to use now. They are your "hide-the-body" friends because if they showed up at your house in the middle of the night with a dead body in their trunk, you would immediately be on board to hide the body, no questions asked. But things also got real when she told a few emotional stories about her relationship with her sorority sisters and how they are still there for each other when life gets hard. A lot of women in the room teared up, including myself. I really connected with the stories she told and it made me think about how much I value my alumna sorority experience.

My last day in at UW was gorgeous, especially for Seattle! So I decided to take advantage of the weather and take a jog around campus. It is such a pretty place and I thought it was so cool that the campus has a waterfront activities center. Below is the view from the dock where students can take out canoes and kayaks!

It was a great visit overall and I got the nicest card from the colony when I left this morning. But I'm also excited to be heading back east for the week!


September In Seattle by Shawn Mullins