Although spring break awaits, a lot of fun things are going on here in CoMo (Columbia, Missouri)! :P. It's been a hectic week with St. Patrick's Day, Relay For Life, midterm exams and plenty of meetings, so here's a recap!
Amanda, Jillian, Susan, Kathryn, Charesse and I pose in the formal living room before Phi Mu's St. Patrick's Day Social.
The new quatrefoil photo! Instead of the typical two or three girls creating a quatrefoil, we figured out how to get a large group to! Take your thumb and pointer fingers and make two eyes with your thumbs in the center, then take your middle fingers and straighten them like a kite above the eyes, and then your 2 ring fingers arch over the kite! Yay for sorority hand symbols!
Relay For Life preparation has not only been all year, but every evening of the week before Relay, restaurant fundraisers were held. Here, committee members stand in McCallister's (a southern deli) in our shirts serving on guests. Restaurants like these volunteer to donate 10% of sales to American Cancer Society, and we help them out by waiting and bussing on tables, which brings back great Friday's memories. We raised over $200!
The actual Relay was held on Saturday the 20th to Sunday the 21st, 6 pm to 6 am indoors at the Rec Center. Here is the logo for "Cancer: Game On!" on our lovely cake.
Relay For Life of Mizzou, and generally at college, is a lot different from that of Northbrook and Glenview. Not only did we have 144 teams and over 1500 participants, but we raised roughly $100,000 for American Cancer Society, with about $20,000 of that being on-site in one night! Instead of just walking the track and talking with others, Mizzou Relay has each team hold an on-site fundraiser, like a bake sale, jail n' bail, sumo wrestle in inflatable suits, pie in the face, Miss Relay pageant, etc. to raise money during the event and get people to play carnival-like games for cancer. I am so impressed at some of the fundraisers people think of (kissing booth, pay $1 to send any person at the event to 'jail' and they must find $3 somehow to be bailed out) and how successful they all are. The one thing I miss about GBN Relay is how they read all the names at the luminaria ceremony, but GBN's Relay is in June so I'll be going! Be excited! There are plenty more pictures, but the one below shows how many people we fit in the Rec and how successful the event was. What I liked about Mizzou Relay is it was not so much a fight to stay warm like in tents and walking on the GBN track, but more a night of entertainment and fundraising while battling cancer.
Here, Nicole and I are by the large ice sculpture that was donated to Relay. How awesome is that?! It got smaller and smaller and clearer and clearer throughout the night.
As many of you know, I was on the planning committee for Relay and a member of the Team Development subcommittee, where we helped recruit some of the 144 teams, kept in touch with their captains and held bimonthly team captain meetings since December. Here's our committee smiling on the dance floor at 3 a.m.
The entire steering committee poses below, happy after a phenomenal Relay For Life.
Mark Twain's J&C Community had three Relay teams and the 5th and 6th floors had a whole corner of the gym with the video games and cake walk fundraisers, as well as a ton of studious people hanging out. A couple members of the Twainers are below, with white shirts denoting participants, green shirts are team captains and orange is committee.
With the end of the year approaching, this photo is dedicated to the community sense in Mark Twain at our J&C peer advisers' birthday party on the night of March 21st. Even though everyone was incredibly tired after a long night at Relay, everyone went to the lounge for cake and cupcakes and I realized how much I was going to miss living in Twain. :(.
Now if those photos weren't enough, that's not all that's happening in my life!!
-I come home on Thursday for spring break! I packed 11 church outfits for Holy Week and three bags of winter clothing to take home. Yay college!
REVELATIONS
--While I was reading my political science text book last week, I had a discovery. The chapter discussed Congress, and I decided that after I turn 25, I want to run for the House of Representatives. The evolution of this occupation amazed me and I feel not only would it be a wonderful 'job,' but a great way to serve, make decisions, and complete other things I absolutely love doing. So keep in mind....Katie Artemas for the House...probably in some district in Illinois...2016! Vote me!
--I was on the phone with Meredith yesterday night, and she is in Washington DC for a spring break trip with U of I students. This just enhanced the fact that the whole world is connected. Not only did she go to dinner at the same Buca di Beppo we have a ton of fun memories at from 8th grade, but she met a fellow Torchie there who was interning at the White House. If the Torch bond is not enough, one of her roommates just happens to be someone I went to Fanari with for five years and never kept in touch with because she didn't have a Facebook. That's crazy!!!! Meredith, at another school, takes a trip, and a girl on this trip happens to be Greek, happens to know me, and been in my cabin for five years, and be her ROOMMATE! What an insane world.
Hope that was enough to keep you updated and bored of everything going on here, and have a great spring break to those of you vacationing or chilling right now! Much love!
518 misses you. Love, Laura & Kathryn
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