> Homecoming (and where have they been?)
A big game in the school's main team sport (often football or basketball),
often against the school's major rival. It's called "homecoming" because it's
usually when alumni reunions are held.

> Commencement (doesn't his happen at the end of the school year?)
Yes. It is the graduation ceremony, and represents the "commencement" of the
next phase of the student's life.

> Freshman
First year of college/university. Second year is sophomore, third is junior,
fourth is senior.

> letterman
> varsity
These go together. Varsity teams are the elite players in any given sport;
members of the varsity teams are allowed to wear the school's initial on their
jacket, and are therefore "lettermen".

> the terrifying ritual of the pep assembly/rally (as in Grease or Heathers)
That's beyond me. I went to a science honors high school - we didn't have
sports teams or pep rallies.

> The even more baffling rituals of the road trip and spring break
S'OK, baffles me too.

> What purpose do fraternities/sororities have and why are they named after
> strings of Greek letters?
They're supposedly organizations of people with similar interests who form
close-knit societies. The actual meaning of the letters is generally a close
kept secret, revealed as part of the initiation process. The Greek is a
tradition dating back to the first "fraternity", Phi Beta Kappa, the National
Honor Society. Why Greek? Damned if I know. At least one frat, ZBT (Zeta Beta
Tau) actually started out as Zayin Beth Tov (Hebrew letters), a Jewish
brotherhood. The changed to the Greek equivalents when they started spreading
to schools beyond the first local chapter.

> Why does everyone get so worked up about cheerleaders? (Vacuous *and* loud
> doesn't seem to be a combination to laud, to me)
Don't ask me, man... I'm gay, so I'm immune to their "charms" anyway.

> Do kids ever bring their lunch to school?
I did, all the way through high school. At university, since I lived in the
dorms and didn't have a kitchen, I bought a meal plan and ate in the dining
hall.

> SAT's
Scholastic Aptitude Test, I believe the initials are. It's a standardized
examination to quantitate verbal and mathematical skills. It is NOT as highly
weighted in the application process as most kids fear.

> Ivy league
This one's fun, and most Americans don't know the right answer. The Ivy League
is a basketball association - a group of schools that formed a league for their
basketball teams to play one another. By coincidence, it includes some of the
oldest, and traditionally best, universities in the Northeast, such as Harvard,
Yale, Brown, Columbia and Princeton.

****************************************
Randall Cook of Northpass (soon to be "of Sudentur")
     (formerly Avraham haRofeh)
     mka Randy Goldberg MD