Land of the Maries

So the Frat just returned from Maryland where we were down for the Alpha Beta Volleyball tournament. Alpha Beta is the chapter of Phi Sigma Pi at UMD and this is there 15th year holding this tourney. It was my first time there but apparently it's quite popular--Brothers drove up from Florida and North Carolina State to be there.

We left on Friday evening..it's supposed to be a 2 hour ride but we took a ridiculously long, albeit highly entertaining Wendy's break so we didn't get to the hotel until much later. There was supposed to be a "Greek Gods and Goddesses" Toga party that night but all of us were so tired that we stayed at the hotel and watched HBO. The beauty of the night was that there were 11 of us Brothers and only two double hotel rooms which, according to the hotel, could only be occupied by 3 people each. Whoops! So there ended up being 6 people in my room and 5 people in the other. We pushed the beds to the walls and inflated an air mattress on the floor. It was one ginormous slumber party. Pretty freaking awesome.

Saturday we woke up, went to breakfast, and then down to the field to the warm up. We got these sweet new team shirts that Lindsay designed so we were all decked out in Gamma Xi pride. Before the tourney started the President of Alpha Beta said a few words and we had a few moments of silence for Erin Peterson, who would have been inducted as a Brother this weekend into the Alpha Rho chapter at VA Tech and Reema Samaha, sister to an Alpha Rho alum.

Gamma Xi was slated to play in the first round against Beta Delta and while the Brothers put up a valiant effort and pushed it to three sets, we still lost. I didn't play..although I did have a mighty good time cheering my head off and coming up with new cheers for the Brothers. Later we did a park cleanup service event where we basically uprooted a whole bunch of invasive plant species from the park nearby. After the BBQ lunch we basically spent the rest of the day lazing around on the fields. Brothers got pick-up games of ultimate frisbee and football going..it was a very laid-back atmosphere. People were happy to just be hanging out with their Brothers on an awesomely gorgeous day.

GX went to dinner at Bennigan's (good food!) and then to the party that Alpha Beta had organized in a nearby Knights of Columbus hall. Good times were to be had...I was DD so I managed to keep my eye on everyone and we all successfully returned to the hotel in one piece where we played Rummikub until 2 a.m. Four of us left bright and early this morning so that we could get work done in the city. Pinning is this evening and I'm kinda anxious for it, hoping that people remember to do or bring what they said they would. ::fingers crossed::

Until next time...