Back from Break

After a week-long vacation from school, it was nice seeing all the friendly faces at Monday night dinner!

What's to Come:

We're in for a busy next couple of weeks, so look forward to many new posts regarding All College Sing, Greek Week activities and Campus Day. 

If that doesn't persuade you to keep coming back, awesome pictures and videos from the events will be available too!

Pi Phi love and mine,

the Iowa Beta Pi Phis. 

Sisterhood Event

Just before break, our VP of Membership decided to host a Sisterhood Event to boost our morale! 

Her and her committee spent hours deciding on awards for each girl in the house and decorating crowns and sashes to be given away at Miss Pi Phi 2011!

Awards ranged from "Miss Congeniality (Megan Berlin) to Miss California (Annie Olson). Some of the awards reflected appropriate inside jokes. 

Sadly, when "Miss 30% Chance it's Already Raining" was announced, I had an overwhelming feeling it was probably for me. After half of the house guessed my name, the Miss Pi Phi host (Sam Brough) called me up to receive my award. 

The award ceremony couldn't have come at a more perfect time. Being together and having a few good laughs right before break worked wonders for our morale and will no doubt keep Pi Phi love strong all through break. 

PPL&Mine!

Monmouth Duo!

Pi Beta Phi and Kappa Kappa Gamma were both founded at Monmouth College in Illinois. Because we share the same birthplace, every year we hold an event for the ladies of KKG and PBP to bond over refreshments, conversation and... Greek Jeopardy!

The event switches between houses from year to year, and this time it was at the Pi Phi house. 

Excitement filled the Date Room as we all waited for the Kappas to arrive. When they got here, half of the ladies were taken on tours of the house.  They loved the tours and we received many comments about how big and awesome the inside is!

While tours were going on, the rest of ladies headed for our Karma's (our cook) famous M&M brownies and refreshments. It was nice just to sit and socialize with another sorority on campus. 

I think we all realized that while it's nice to bond with our own members, it's also important to stay connected to the other Greek organizations on campus. We're all doing amazing things at Simpson and I feel the Greek community could be more supportive of the other houses. 

After we got caught up on the lives of our friends from a different sorority, we were ready for Jeopardy! We were split up into 6 teams by our birthday month. This continued to allow the Pi Phis and Kappas to work together to earn the most points. The categories included Pi Beta Phi, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Monmouth and Movie Quotes. 

We were having so much fun that the game was over way too soon. The winners were announced (my team won!) and the last half of the girls were given house tours before they sadly left for the evening. 

All in all, I feel like this was a really successful Monmouth Duo. Sometimes there's a stereotype that different sororities can't get along, but we were having so much fun talking that many of us don't think we should wait a whole year before doing an event together again! 

I think the super friendly atmosphere opened the door for next year's event to be even better!

Thank you Simpson College KKGs for helping us have yet another amazing Monmouth Duo!

Pass the Candle please!

There's so much excitement lately at the Pi Phi house! We've had yet another candle passing (I'm wondering what the record is for more candle passings in a year is?!).

For those of you non-Pi Phis, a candle passing is something we do when someone has a special announcement. This announcement can range from getting into grad school, getting a lavalier from a fraternity man, getting a promise ring or the big one - getting engaged!

After getting a lavalier and a few engagements already this year, one of our members had some exciting news to share with the house.

Iowa Beta Kim Lovik is engaged to her boyfriend of 3 years! The story was quite sweet, involving their anniversary and him kneeling in the snow in the middle of a snow storm. 

How exciting! If you see her, make sure to wish her congratulations!

Scholarship Dinner

Monday was an important day for the Iowa Betas because we celebrated last semester's excellent grades with the annual scholarship dinner!

The meal was delicious and being able to sit and eat with all our sisters and guests was a treat. The amazing men of Alpha Tau Omega, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Lambda Chi Alpha and Kappa Theta Psi came over to serve us dinner. 

Our guests included Dr. John Byrd - President of Simpson College, Steven Griffith - Senior Vice President and Dean of Academics, Jim Thorius - Vice President for Student Development; Dean of Students, and Ardene Downing - President of Pi Beta Phi House Corporation.

Our successes would not be possible if it weren't for their support and words of encouragement. Thank you to all who made our scholarship dinner possible!

Capture the Flag

Last night we had a second exchange with the men of Lambda Chi Alpha (we just had so much fun on the first one we had to do it again!)

This time we skipped the board games and decided on something that would take advantage of the nice weather we've been having!

So we headed to Buxton park for a game of (extremely) muddy Capture the Flag! The upperclassmen and the LXAs were on one team and the underclassmen on the other (we have a lot of underclassmen!)

Most of the underclassmen team ended up in 'jail' so we were useless, making it easy for the other team to capture our flag and win the game.

Despite the muddy/snowy ground and the fact that my team lost, it was one of my favorite exchanges we've had. I have a feeling we'll be having a lot more physically active exchanges in our future!

Excelling in Academics

Once again, the Simpson College Pi Phis have proven their excellence in academics!

For the seventh semester in a row we have won the grade cup with a GPA of 3.353. This makes it the 10th time getting the grade cup in the last 11 semesters. While we're proud of our academic achievements, we have big hopes to improve our GPA more for next semester.

Congratulations to the Pi Phis and all the other Greek chapters for the hard work they put into last semester.