Sisters!

April 25

Nashville's downtown area was all that you would expect from a musically inclined city. The main street had old rock and roll and country music playing from speakers set on the street lamps and the street signs were in the shape of guitar picks. We went to the oldest operating ice cream shop in Nashville, Roomie got some coffee while I had a scoop of Tennessee Track ice cream. It was good, but not what I wanted at 11am. We walked the three blocks of downtown, passed some local guitarists playing on the street, took our picture with an Elvis statue, and decided that we had seen all there was to see.

Hoping to continue with our good weather luck, we drove through Tennessee. We had already dodged the fires in Texas, just barely escaped the tornadoes in Arkansas (they came the day after we left), now we were hoping to breeze right through good ole Tennessee and avoid the thunder storms. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had another plan. We had great weather until we got close to the Virginia boarder and all of a sudden it started pouring. It was so bad that at one point we could barely see five feet ahead of ourselves on the freeway. It poured on us for about 15 minutes, then just as quick as it came, it went away. As we got closer and closer to the Tennessee/Virginia border we kept our eyes peeled for the Welcome sign, but we soon discovered, much to our dismay, that Virginia did not feel the need to welcome us to their fine state. Thanks for ruining one of our road trip goals!

After a quick change at a gas station, we finally arrived at the sorority house at the University of Virginia. The house was so big and beautiful; just like a typical east coast house! It had a huge porch complete with a porch swing and large bay windows. The sisters who lived in the house were very welcoming and eager to talk to us about our road trip and about our chapter at UCI. We chatted a little bit upstairs with the girls and got a tour of the house. They told us that they don’t have meeting or initiation in the house itself, but rather all the Greek chapters hold all their meetings and Ritual events in an old church on campus. Roomie and I thought that was pretty interesting considering all the things they have to carry down for meeting. Two of the girls who live on the main floor were nice enough to let us borrow their room for the night so we let all the girls of the house get back to studying while we got a much needed night’s rest.