Eta Colony Visit!

I was close to crashing yesterday. The week had been pretty intense due to school, busyness, and all the other things that make life stressful. In this light, I wasn't really looking forward to spending valuable study time in Fresno, where the Eta chapter of my fraternity, Alpha Gamma Omega, is in the process of re-founding. Just for background, fraternities have multiple chapters, one per college or university, and the chapters are given a letter in the Greek alphabet according to the order in which they were founded. For example, the first chapter of my fraternity was founded at UCLA, and is known as the Alpha chapter. The second chapter, at Cal, is the Beta chapter, and so on. My chapter, at UC Davis, would be referred to as the Iota chapter. This would make it the ninth founded chapter of the fraternity. The Eta chapter, at CSU Fresno, was the eighth, but the chapter dissolved, and now some guys are attempting to start it up again. At this point, Eta is at colony status, and will be considered a full fledged chapter of the fraternity once they maintain their numbers for a year.
In any case, all my apprehension dissolved once I met the guys. They were all really laid back and fun. Additionally you have to have a lot of respect for them. Starting up a fraternity is tough work. They are essentially pledging the fraternity and running the fraternity at the same time. Having participated in both of these processes, I can honestly say that the guys at Eta must be superhuman. On top of all of this, they were fasting for the weekend to prepare for rush. I felt pretty guilty scarfing down the muffins and fruit they had bought for us while they sat there with their mouths watering.
They didn't make a big deal out of it, though, and we had a really fun time. We drove into the Sierras (it was about 1 and a half hours), and went tubing in the snow. I ate it quite a few times, and considering the fact that I didn't have any gloves or boots, I froze pretty quickly. I froze with a smile on my face though. I got to play Balderdash for the first time, and I got to meet ADX girls from CSU Fresno. ADX is our sister sorority. The ADX girls from Fresno were pretty cute.
Anyways, enough about cute girls. Incidentally, I have a friend who is adamantly opposed to calling females over 20 "girls." This makes a lot of sense, but it is such a habit for me to call members of the opposite gender "girls," that it will be tough to break it! But again, enough about gals, let's move on from women (how can I, I'm a single twenty-something!).
I think the best way to sum all of this up is this: I am basically married to my fraternity. We have reached the point in our marriage where I am starting to resent the inane commitments that my fraternity requires of me. I love it nonetheless, though, and I will miss the guys that make it up dearly when I graduate. This fraternity has provided me with so much. The gratitude I feel for Alpha Gamma Omega is difficult to put into words. Maybe I should take a page out of the Eta colonies' book and give back, as much as I might not feel like it at the time.