Viva la Panama Canal!

Stay home? What does that mean?! After my work trips to Charleston and Charlotte, I had one day of rest work before I packed back up again and headed south to the Republic of Panama. But what an opportunity it was! I certainly couldn't complain about the 90 degree weather, even if I was in meetings a majority of the time. I also got to bring Mom along - which was so fun to experience together.

The reason for being in Panama City was for the US Grains Council's International Marketing Conference. I am excited to be serving on the Membership and Communications Advisory Team to help launch the new branding initiative, fresh and new with an updated logo and vibrant, user-friendly website (launching in the upcoming week). As my involvement with the US Grains Council has increased, so have my opportunities to see the importance of agriculture to the world (you may remember the corn mission through the Council that I traveled to Japan, Taiwan and China with in 2010).

Traveling through the Panama Canal and getting an up-close view of the new Canal expansion site was a highlight for both Mom and I. An excursion from the conference gave us a beautiful, balmy evening to enjoy on a dinner cruise through the Panama Canal and through the locks from the Pacific side going inland to Gatun Lake. The locks, which have been installed and working since 1914, are the same and have not been replaced. Can you imagine all that it took to carve out the canal back in the early 1900's without the technology we have today, and it is all still in working shape?!

Also while in Panama City, we had a great city tour, got some shopping in, and just enough sun to forget all of the snow back home. I will post about this next!

Find  my pictures on my online photo album here.

Read here about my blog on the importance of the Canal to US Agriculture.

Wordless Wednesday | Family pictures

Pope Family Pictures – August 13. More to come…

Wordless Wednesday | Tsunami devastation

I just returned from Japan last night, but wanted to briefly share a few photos of the earthquake/tsunami areas that we visited. We cooked up 500 servings of U.S. beef to give to evacuees - more to come later. Here are a few tsunami pictures:

Sacramento!

Ronny and I took a little getaway to California last week through the weekend. Our main purpose for going to California was to attend our college friend's wedding. But we decided to go out a few days early, visit Sacramento and my grad school friend, Janet, then drive through wine country on our way north to the wedding.

I'll spread out the pictures in a few posts, so this is just about our time in Sacramento.

We arrived in Sac late on Wednesday night and stayed downtown right across from the State Capitol. It had a beautiful rose garden and park surrounding it.

We saw our first orange tree...

And we visited inside the Capitol building. This is the Governor's office and former Governor Schwarzenegger donated the bronze bear.

 

Then we walked down to Old Sacramento - a bustling part of the city during the '49 gold rush and the '50 land rush. Interesting fact - because this part of the city was built right next to the river and flooded, they raised the street and made all of the second floors the main floors.

A man was shooting a film! Ronny thought he recognized him but I didn't. :)

Then we visited the California State Railroad Museum. It had a ton of real trains from the days of settling the west and the gold rush and land rush. It was quite the site to see how massive they were and to read all of the history surrounding that time period.

This cute little ol' guy gave us a great tour.

This diesel locomotive was the largest!! It weighed over 165,000 tons and the wheels were taller than me.

  

It was a fun little history tour and then we had a nice, long walk back to the hotel. We had checked our bags with the concierge at the hotel as we knew we wouldn't be back by checkout time, and unfortunately, our bags were gone. To make a very LONG and frustrating story short, they sent them on a tour bus with a big group of Europeans on their way to Sonoma - so much for matching up the luggage tags! They weren't found until 11 am the following morning - but we had a nice evening with my friend Janet, who I'll blog about next!

Theta for a Lifetime

This past weekend was the Kappa Alpha Theta’s 50th Anniversary of the Delta Eta Chapter at K-State. It was so great to catch up with so many Thetas in my era, as well as a family member my mom's age!

First, the gals of the 2004 pledge class (technically "new member class" - but we'll call it pledge), got together at the fabulous La Fiesta restaurant in Manhattan. I'm so thankful for this time together with these girls because the rest of the day was a blur and I didn't get to visit with everyone later.

In the afternoon was a tea with all of the reunion guests. They had a nice program, recognized many of the initial members and gave us an update on the renovations planned to start this May. We recieved these cute totes, and took many pictures afterwards!

 My Theta family - the Royal Family!

Most of the '00s decade gals in attendance.

 The chapter president picture - it was so great to have so many there!

That evening, we had a decade dinner with the '00s decade at Pat's in Aggieville. It was a great place to unwind and socialize with many great friends.

My wonderful friend and "twin", Melissa - check her out over at Chronicles of a Lipstick Cowgirl!

So great to see all of you sisters. Let's get together again before the 75th! To see more weekend pictures, you can look at my online album here.

Honoring today: KAT Founder’s Day

On this day, 141 years ago, the Kappa Alpha Theta fraternity for women was founded. In 1870, KAT was founded as the first Greek-letter fraternity for women as it was modeled after the many fraternities for men; but yes, it is a sorority for women.

Kappa Alpha Theta, or “Theta” as it’s called for short, is the sorority I joined in college, and have gained so many wonderful memories, connections and best friends. A sorority is nothing like the stereotypes, and Theta is so much more than just a sorority. Theta’s purpose is:  To support members to learn, grow, and excel, and our core values are personal excellence, friendship/sisterhood, scholarship, service, and leadership.

Theta was founded by four pioneering college women—Bettie Locke, Alice Allen, Bettie Tipton, and Hannah Fitch—who established Kappa Alpha Theta Fraternity, the first Greek-letter fraternity for women, at Indiana Asbury College (now DePauw University) in Greencastle, Indiana. Bettie Locke even has a Twitter account: @BettieLocke.

What’s even more special is my younger sister, Emily, became a Theta in 2008. I was so glad to be able to be there for initiation and help welcome her into the sisterhood! It’s so fun to know Em is experiencing the same experiences I had in college, and that we’ll have that special connection forever.

So in honor of today’s Founder’s Day celebration, here is a flashback to my four years spent in Theta at K-State!

Freshman Year:

Sophomore Year:

Junior Year:

Senior Year: