Sisterhood of the Traveling Pandas: Katie's Ireland Adventure, continued

A few months ago, we shared a little bit about our sister Katie's Ireland adventure. Katie spent her summer interning at the West Sligo Family Resource Center in Enniscrone. This past week she helped at a children's camp as a part of the internship. Here's what she has to say:

This Monday through Wednesday, the organization I am interning for put on a children’s camp for the surrounding communities. The town I am working in, Enniscrone, is a small town surrounded by many other small towns so this camp attracted children from all over the county. We decided to plan activities focused on math and science because the government is really pushing organizations to figure out ways to get children involved in those subjects across the country. Ireland is at the very edge of the western part of Europe and thus attracts business from countries west of Europe. There has recently been a huge influx of technology and science-based companies finding homes in Ireland but there is a shortage of Irish employees for these new businesses to hire which is why the government wants to get kids interested in the subjects of math and science. It was also very important for the family resource centre I work at to get children interested in those subjects because there is a really high poverty rate in and around Enniscrone. It is a very rural and agriculturally-based area that doesn’t get a lot of attention. The idea is that if we can get these children interested in science and math then they can slowly work their way out of the cycle of poverty by gaining employment in the math and technology sectors where the pay is usually higher.

Each day we had an activity in the morning and an activity in the afternoon. On Monday we had “fun math” in the morning and built Lego Technic models in the afternoon. On Tuesday we painted signs for the Tidy Towns initiative in the morning. The kids each got to paint their own sign and got to put a friendly reminder on it about not littering and keeping the community clean. My favorites were “put it in the can, man” and the creative “throw rubbish away so birds don’t choke and die.” Well, it’s true! ;) The signs will go up around Dromore West which is the village where the camp was held. The kids were so excited that their signs would be up for the whole town to see. In the afternoon we did jewelry making which I was afraid the boys wouldn’t like, but all kids made at least one bracelet and one boy even made five! On Wednesday in the morning the kids did “outdoor skills” where we took them to the football pitch and they learned some football (soccer) skills. Then in the afternoon they decorated cupcakes which they all enjoyed so much they ate most of them instead of taking them home to show their parents.

I have been doing this internship for seven weeks now and this camp was definitely one of my favorite things I’ve done. It didn’t seem like much but even just getting them familiar with ways that math can be fun or teaching them how to build robots out of Legos is helping them- introducing them to things they never thought could be fun and making them enjoyable. Maybe not all of them enjoy math and science but hopefully we changed at least one kid’s mind about the subjects. All of the kids said they wanted to come back for another camp and the resource centre is already planning a Halloween camp and was just given a grant to fund doing just that. 

This internship has been such a blessing- it has taught me how to make a non-profit organization run from all aspects which is exactly what I plan on doing with my life. I am very grateful to have had this opportunity but I can’t wait to get back to my AOII sisters and family in Nebraska in just 15 days!

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Not Just Four Years. For Life.

Our sister Ashley recently wrote a paper about AOII for an English class. It's difficult to put into words how much AOII means to us, but this does a pretty good job!

"A big white door with stained glass windows attached to an old brick house. There’s a rectangle cover around the old doorbell button. The button pushes in easy with age and releases an exciting deep song of chimes, followed by the thumping of feet running down the old spiral staircase just inside. The door swings open with squeals of its age and tire to welcome you inside.

 Just inside the doorway is where old meets new. The lingering smell of old, such as opening an old trunk filled with memories and secrets from your grandmother’s youth that never fades away. The smell of new, from the fresh light blue paint across the walls and brightly buffed wood floors mixes with the old making me feel safe and excited. I walk forward into an opening just passed the entryway where I can see the spiral staircase and two big entryways into two smaller rooms. My hand skims across the plush red couch begging me to sink down into its warmth and escape into the calming blue walls.

The first time I felt my heart fall for the house was the day I moved in. Although I had visited it many times, the feeling wasn’t the same as that day I arrived with all my bags. The house had just been renovated; spruced up just in time for me to be welcomed into it. Not often is it a quiet home. Usually it is filled with chatter and laughter, to the point you can’t even hear your own thoughts. On the rare occasion you are there alone, sitting in silence, you will feel the house fill you up. Although no one is around, the ghosts of laughter and chatter from over seventy years fills the air and lives in the walls. It is a peaceful loneliness, as if you are never alone at all.

When I picture the first voice ever in this home, I imagine Stella George Perry, our founder. I can hear Stella whispering excitedly words of love and sisterhood to a small group of women. I sense authority in her voice, as she sets standards for generations of women to come, but a strong hopefulness in her heart. This was a time when women did not have a place on a University campus. On a campus of predominately men, the house provided the women a place to feel safe and secure.

These women forged a bond together to support each other’s growth and development when no one else would support them. They would help each other succeed intellectually, personally, and spiritually as they had little help from anyone else.  They promised in return to devote their time to the sisterhood and through their pooled resources and intelligence to make a difference on the campus. I can imagine a few years later a beautiful woman with dark wavy hair, dressed in a long formal coat, gloves, hat and heels walking up the steps toward the house for the first time. I see this happen through the eyes of my grandpa, standing across the street, as he has described this scene to me many times. This was the first time he ever saw my grandma, the first and last time he fell in love.

My memories of this house are a mixture of those I’ve heard from my grandma, and those I have experienced on my own. Bringing her to the house now, seventy years after she lived there, reminds me of a scene from the movie Titanic: the old woman goes back to the Titanic in the beginning of the movie and you relive the story of her youth as if it were yesterday. The girls in the house swarm around her as she describes her memories. She still refers to the entry way as the necking room as this is where girls used to kiss their dates goodbye -- boys were not allowed any further into the house. When she tells her stories all of the girls awe over her, as the times she describes seem much more romantic and intriguing. My grandma still imagines any formal date of mine picking me up at the door, and walking me over to the Student Union for a dance as she did in her day. She asks me if I get cold at night, sleeping in the house. I never understood why she was so concerned about this. Eventually I figured out she had to go to sleep with wet hair each night as they didn’t have hair driers when she lived in the house, and she forgot that we have them now. She imagines her life in the house seventy years ago to be the same as my life in it today.

Seventy years later I am living in the same building, with the same walls, same floors and staircase. The only thing that has changed is the people whom fill it. Right now it is I who fills the home. I take from it what I need-shelter, safety and security. I learn to love and cherish this home. Soon, however, I will leave so someone else can live there and take from it what I once did. I feel protective over my home and need to check on it from time to time to make sure it is being cared for properly, as it always cared for me, and those before me. It is strange to look at pictures from decades ago, of women sitting in the house, posed in front of the same structures I have sat at and taken my own pictures in front of countless times. It is challenging to imagine these strangers living in my home, and feeling the same feelings towards it as I do. It is even more challenging to imagine future generations of women living in my home, not knowing if they will respect it or appreciate it the way I have grown to.

This home is a historical landmark, so any physical features of the house cannot be changed. The people inside it will come and go. The colors will fade and change. The furniture that fills the rooms will be moved and replaced. The core of the house, however, its walls, floors and structures will never change. It is filled during the school year with joy and laughter then left to rest in the summer. I imagine the walls taking this time to soak up the laughter and chatter from the previous school year. Forever these memories are stored in the walls and cherished, just in time to settle and prepare for the new ones to come in the fall semester.  

The home holds the lessons learned by generations of women whom have lived there before us. It holds the tears of hundreds of broken hearts and the giggles and whispers of hundreds of hearts that found love. It is a home that holds people for a short period of their lives, but in some ways the most important times. It shelters our hearts and souls while we discover them and develop them. It provided a safe haven for our founders over one hundred years ago, when they had nothing else. It provided my grandma a home while at school, when her home was too far away. It provided me a legacy; bringing me close to my grandma, through an invisible bond, for one last time during the last few years of her life.  It then sends us on our way, strong, loving and courageous. It gives us so much but somehow still takes a small part of each woman, storing it in its foundation to support the growth of the next generation.

We join sororities for the privileges but are truly shaped from them by our obligations. The longer I have been a member of the community I realize my obligation to the other girls in the sorority, some present but mostly those in the past. Our home was built in a time when women vowed to support each other when they had no one else. Today it is just as important to have women supporting women in a way that produces active members in society whom are dedicated to charity. Hearing the respect and admiration my grandma has in her voice whenever she speaks of an Alpha Omicron Pi woman, I feel this obligation in my gut to act in a way to uphold her expectations. When I look back over pictures of my grandmother throughout her lifetime I clearly see a classy, elegantly tender and compassionate woman.

This fills my heart with respect and admiration, as I know she became that woman through her experiences and lessons learned in the house. Although nearly seven generations of years have passed, and times have changed so much, the quality of lessons and experiences have not changed. I look around me in my home, at the women that surround me, and I see the same classy, intelligent, compassionate features of my grandmother growing in the faces around me. I feel the same features growing in my soul. I hope that this experience will never change in the future generations. My heart says it won’t, but I will always be around to check on my home, and thank it for affection it has given me. "

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Sisterhood of the Traveling Pandas: Alia in South Africa

AOIIs love to travel and take on new adventures. This summer, one of our sisters was given the opportunity to study abroad in South Africa for a few weeks, but decided to travel early in order to explore Cape Town. Here's what Alia has to say about her experience so far:

"In January, I decided to apply for a summer travel abroad program to South Africa. The trip lasts 4 weeks and is centered around global health and the issues that South Africans face today regarding their health. The week before the program started, a few of the other study abroad students and I decided to check out Cape Town because our formal program was centered in Johannesburg and Kruger.

        So far, we have seen many aspects of Capetonian life. We visited the township of Langa and learned about their culture and way of life. It was great to experience how Capetonians live, not just the commercial aspect of the city. It was also very cool to see the different community projects that have been put in place and are making a real difference in the lives of those in Langa. For example, a community center has recently been built in the middle of the township which provides an after school program for adolescents, rather than leaving them to be influenced by drugs, gangs, or violence.

        Another day in South Africa, we rented a car for $20 (crazy, right?!) and drove through the little towns and stopped at the beaches and cliffs to take in the gorgeous backdrop on the way to the Cape of Good Hope. One thing we found ourselves saying was, "These pictures don't come close to doing it justice." About halfway to the Cape, we stopped to look at the penguins that were hanging out at Boulders Beach. After we got to the Cape, we hiked up to the light house at the Cape of Good Hope, where we could see the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. We ended the day by watching the sun set on Camps Bay, one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen. Today, we ended our stay in Cape Town with a morning stroll through Bo-Kaap, a predominantly Muslim neighborhood with the brightest, most colorful houses. After that, we visited Robben Island, where many political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, were jailed during apartheid. The history that is interwoven into every detail of Cape Town is by far what has made my experiences here so rich.  

        Tomorrow, I head off to Johannesburg to begin my study abroad program and I can't help but to recognize how bittersweet it will be to leave this incredible city."

From South Africa to Sri Lanka, Spain to Ireland, and everything in between, our sisters are definitely creating some fantastic memories this summer!

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AOII Leadership Institue 2014

Seven Zeta sisters travelled to Franklin, TN at the end of June for Alpha Omicron Pi's Leadership Institute (LI) 2014. The 3-day conference of over 700 AOII sisters from over 120 chapters across the United States and Canada is a great way for members to meet, share experiences, and learn how to improve their chapters.

Zeta AOIIs at International Headquarters

We kicked off LI by taking a tour Alpha Omicron Pi's International Headquarters in Brentwood, TN! The building, which serves as an office for our executives, also functions as an AOII museum and is home to several sorority artifacts dating back to our founding in 1897! We even managed to find our chapter's submotto, hand written by Stella! How cool is that?

Our chapter submotto, written down by one of our Founders, Stella George Stern Perry!

While at LI, we heard several Keynote speakers including Dr. Lori Hart, Rick Barnes, and James T. Robilotta. All of the speakers offered advice on how to make the Greek experience the best it could be, by pursuing leadership roles and developing future leaders within our chapter. In addition to these speakers, we attended sessions on topics such as Diversity in Sisterhood, Governing Documents, Retain and Engage, and FUNdraising.

Saturday night was the awards dinner. Our chapter was lucky enough to win two national awards: Excellence in Finance and Excellence in Membership Retention. We are so proud of our members for helping us to achieve this, and so thankful for our advisers who guided us through this past year! Zeta chapter was also recognized as being a Ruby Level chapter, the highest level of achievement, for fulfilling at least 95 percent of our standards of excellence.

Zeta senior and Vice President of Administration, Charlie Bastian, says this about attending LI: "I was so excited when I learned that this LI was aimed at chapter Vice Presidents of Administration! As I sat in meetings with other VPAs from around the country, I heard so many new ideas that Zeta can implement. A few of these ideas include ways to motivate members to come to events that aren't required, how to better utilize our (already awesome) committees, and how to read and implement bylaws. Most importantly, I was able to share my love of AOII with my sisters. In the words of Dr. Lori Hart, one of our keynote speakers and an AOII alumna, "This is your AOII, this is your time. Go out and make it better."

As we set our sights on recruitment in just over a month and returning back to the Pi, we can't wait to tell our sisters about the awesome things we learned at Leadership Institute!

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Sisterhood of the Traveling Pandas: Katie's in Ireland!

This summer, several of our sisters got the chance to travel to new cities to pursue internships. Senior Katie Lamb, a global studies major, had the opportunity to intern in Ireland at the West Sligo Family Resource Centre.

Katie says that the centre "basically provide resources for disadvantaged populations around the area as well as teach them how to use the resources the community already has available. The centre also helps create and pass legislation relating to the people it helps."

Alpha love from the Cliffs of Moher

You can keep up with Katie's adventures in Ireland on her blog!

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Surviving Recruitment

As we prepare to welcome new sisters into our home, we all remember the process we went through to become a part of Alpha Omicron Pi. Recruitment week. It's the best and worst week of the year. Don't worry though, because we've got you covered. Several Zeta sisters offered up advice for women going through the recruitment process this fall. Here are some tips on surviving it all:


Go into recruitment open-minded.
Sophomore Kate says, "Those rumors never describe a house anyway. You'll know after the first round what a house stands for and what the girls are like." Abbey says that joining a chapter is a big decision, and no one needs to make that decision for you.


Be yourself! Going through recruitment is all about finding a group of women that you feel comfortable with. Whether it's talking to a girl about your pet fish, your love of bugs, or the pranks you used to pull on your little brother, there is no better advice than to just be yourself. This will help you find the place where you won't have to change who you are in order to fit in.

Dress comfortably. During recruitment, you are on your feet from 8am to 5pm all week long. As much as you'd like to think that you can survive all week in 6-inch heels, it's probably best to avoid that option. The same goes for your dresses. The UNL Recruitment Handbook also shows great suggestions of what to wear each day.


Take good notes.
During the open house rounds of recruitment, you'll be visiting 15 chapters. Throughout the week, you'll visit fewer chapters but probably talk to multiple girls at each house. We all think we can remember who we loved in each chapter and why, but after 8 hours, it all blurs together! Taking notes about each chapter's presentations, sisters, and your likes and dislikes will help you when preffing chapters later in the week.


It's okay to be nervous. Going through recruitment can be overwhelming! Chances are, however, that the sister talking to you is just as nervous as you are! Junior Anna says, "My sister said to think of recruitment as speed dating, but with girls." Not only are you trying to impress us, but we're trying to impress you! In that case, refer back to Tip #2.

Embarrassing moments happen to the best of us.
Sophomore Rachel jokes, "If you want to make an impression fall down the stairs. Trust me, the house will remember you (you will not be forgotten and instant best friends are made) and you might just get a bid!" Whether it's falling down the stairs, spilling water all over, or ripping your pants while running from one house to the next, it's the moments like these that make the best conversations!


We want to remember you. Junior Charlie says, "Take it as a compliment when we ask you your name (again) as you're walking out the door," or stare at your name tag during the conversation - we just want to remember who we talk to and what we loved about them! Just as you have conversations with dozens of different sisters, we have dozens of conversations a day, too!


It all works out. Your Rho Gamma will tell you time and time again that you'll end up where you're supposed to be. Sophomore Mandy says, "In the end you will know the right house because it feels like home already. Find the place where you wouldn't have to change the way you dress, talk or act at all in order to fit in with the house. Even if you admire the way a group of girls hold themselves it may not be who you are." 

President Emily leaves us with this: "It's a hard, emotional process but if you're true to who you are and are thinking about what you want in a family away from home it'll all turn out for the best. Finding bridesmaids isn't easy but listening to The Climb with your Rho Gam group after 6 day is."

Peace, love, and pandas,

Alpha Omicron Pi - Zeta chapter

To apply for recruitment, click here.

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Here's to New Adventures

As the semester draws to a close, Zeta members are packing their bags and getting ready for a relaxing summer away from classrooms, professors, and textbooks. Several Zetas nabbed some awesome internships for the summer months and will be heading to various cities across the United States as soon as school ends. Here are just a few of the places Zetas will be interning this summer:

Junior Sophie, who just returned from a spring semester internship in New York City, will now be moving to Washington, D.C. for an internship with The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.

Senior Melissa is pursuing her love for fashion by taking an internship with Nordstrom.

Sophomore Maddy will be interning with Deloitte in Omaha this summer. As an advisory intern, Maddy say she isn't 100 percent sure what she will be doing, but she will work with the advisory department in helping businesses to make decisions.

Madi, a junior, will be interning with Wells Fargo Commercial Banking in Omaha. She'll be in their Summer Financial Analyst Program and will even have the opportunity to go to San Francisco for training!

Marketing and advertising/public relations student, Charlie, will be spending her summer working as an account planner at Jacht Ad Lab, UNL's student-run advertising agency. As an account planner, Charlie will focus on market research and helping the clients determine what they would like to achieve with an advertising campaign. After that, she will work to ensure that all parts of the campaign are cohesive, and will give presentations to the clients.

We are so proud of all of these lovely ladies, and can't wait to see what they accomplish!

And just in case you missed it, here's a video of a dancing panda at the Lincoln Marathon on Sunday.

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