Preparing for our guests!

They say that it takes a village to raise a child. At Ursuline Dallas. it takes a village to welcome our friends from all over the world. In October, we will welcome very special guests from Brazil, Germany and England. This past week, our faculty, Global Committee members and the GAGAs (Girls Assisting Global Awareness) club have been working hard behind the scenes to get everything ready for our first guests of the year, the delegation from Colegio Santa Ursula in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil. They arrive tomorrow morning and we just can't wait!

 

UA attends Regional JWAC Meeting



This past Saturday, some of the officers from UA's Jr. World Affairs Club headed over to the HEB school district office to meet with other local "JWACs." It was a wonderful morning planned by our friends in the Education Department of the World Affairs Council of DFW. Our students heard ideas from other local successful JWAC clubs about how their clubs operate. We came away with several fabulous ideas for member activities (ethnic restaurant nights coming soon!). 

The keynote speaker at the regional meeting was Mr. Bill Holston, Director of the Human Rights Initiative. Our students were very impressed by his talk and went up to Mr. Holston after the meeting and asked him to consider coming to Ursuline to speak to our students sometime this year. He was most gracious and we will soon make a plan to hear about the important work of the Human Rights Initiative at our school.

One of the best parts of the meeting, of course, was meeting other DFW students who have a passion for global issues and world affairs. Many new friends were made and we are planning to invite some of them to visit us soon at Ursuline.  Many thanks to the World Affairs Council for including us in this fantastic gathering!

Taking notes on best practices! 

It was a full house! 

New Friends! 

With Mr. Bill Holston

UA co-workers attend screening of Girl Rising



One of our most important educational partners at Ursuline is the World Affairs Council of DFW. Tonight, 23 of Ursuline's co-workers attended a movie screening sponsored by the World Affairs Council and the Gendercide Awareness Project. The movie was the acclaimed documentary, Girl Rising, a film which tells the story of nine girls, in nine different countries, who face overwhelming challenges in their quests for  education. It was a wonderful film and a wonderful evening. We will be meeting in the coming weeks to plan the details of how we will share this important film with our students. Students, expect to learn more about Girl Rising at Global Celebration Day in December!

 

 



Jr. World Affairs Council kicks off the new year!



The new club officers of our Jr. World Affairs Club (WAC) met this past week to plan  for the upcoming school year. These internationally focused students are planning all sorts of events and activities including attending speakers, celebrating the International Day of the Girl and participating in the World Affairs Council international career fair. The Jr.WAC club is open to any Ursuline Dallas student interested in global issues and topics. See Ms. Nipp or Ms. Ross for more information and please come by our booth at the Club Fair next week! 

 

Join Us!

Oman Photos from Ashley

In our recent post, we featured Ashley T., our senior who has just returned from a year living in Muscat, Oman. Today Ashley has shared some of her favorite photos with us below. If you would like to read more about her experiences in Oman, please check out her blog at fromtexastomuscat.tumblr.com

Ashley with some of her Omani siblings and wearing her school uniform

Muscat, Oman

Welcome Back, Ashley T.!

We are delighted to welcome senior Ashley T. back to Ursuline. Ashley spent the last year as an exchange student in Muscat, Oman where she was one of only 50 American students given a scholarship by the US Department of State to spend a year in a country where Arabic is the primary language.

Humble by nature, Ashley tells us that she is not yet totally fluent in Arabic but is "proficient." She strengthened her language skills by living with a host family and by making friends with local students at The Sultan School, an IB (International Baccalaureate) and British school which she describes as a very close knit community.  Like Ursuline, students wear a uniform at the Sultan school, but, in keeping with the cultural norms of Oman, it is a more modest uniform with long sleeves and a long navy jumper.

While in Oman, Ashley lived with a family of 10 children (wow!), a father who is a lawyer and a mother who owns her own tailoring business.  Ashley's actual mother is a flight attendant so Ashley was somewhat accustomed to being away from her mother which was helpful during the many months that she was so far away from home. She had also travelled a lot with her mother in the past so she was already a seasoned traveler when she went to Oman. Ashley tells us that another big factor on her decision to be an exchange student was her experience as an Ursuline delegate. As a freshman and a sophomore, Ashley travelled to China and to Chile with Ursuline. Those short exchanges gave Ashley confidence in her abilities to live in another culture and inspired her to select a longer, more independent experience as a personal challenge.

Now Ashley is back in Dallas and is once again enjoying the company of her old friends and the rhythm of intense academic focus at Ursuline. Still, she misses the delicious multicultural foods of Oman (curries, rices and so much more) and the social aspect of being in a small class of 40 at the Sultan school. We at Ursuline are greatly enriched by Ashley's presence. We are looking forward to hearing more from her and to seeing her display of photos from Oman on Global Celebration Day.

Like all of our seniors, Ashley is contemplating her next steps. She hopes to study abroad again during her college years and may attend a university abroad full time. Ashley is also considering options for a gap year that would take her both to new lands and to new places in the USA. As a true young woman of Serviam, she now wants to find an experience (or experiences) that will allow her to give back even more to the community. We look forward to following Ashley's future and we know that she will be a success wherever her path may go!