All Hail!

I'm almost positive that I've never mentioned this before, but I am currently the Fraternity Education Officer (Feo for short- yes, that means "ugly" in spanish) for the Florida Epsilon colony of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia at the Florida International University.

I mention this only to give a bit of context to the neat things that are going on there. Speaking of context, I should probably also mention that Sinfonia isn't like any fraternity you've ever heard of (your eyebrows can come down now). Forget everything you ever saw in Animal House (which you probably shouldn't be watching anyway). This organization was founded to build better men.

That being said, there are times when I forget how long I've been in college (oh, wait, now I remember. For about quarter of my life now). This past weekend we had a brotherhood retreat, where we basically spent a huge chunk of time together at school doing fraternal things and spent the night. The neat thing about all that were the ties that our group of guys - a gender typically a bit challenged when it comes to the whole "going deep below the surface" kind of thing - were able to establish. I think one of the neatest things for me that night was getting to observe these guys get a glimpse into each other's lives and realize that there's more to their own than they thought.
I'm not trying to be super-philosophical here; I just find it kind of neat that I'm helping to shape the lives of younger guys. And you should hear them sing, too. My word, I've never met a group that enjoys song rehearsals so much. If I ever figure out how to, I'll have to post a recording of our last rehearsal.