Farewell to our sisters from Huaxia Girls' School

Well, it's never easy to say farewell to a dear friend... and the departure of our guests from China was no exception. Many tears were shed as the delegation departed on Friday afternoon. During our last hours together, we had a farewell performance in the KIVA where the girls from China amazed us with their many talents. The performance ended in an exchange of gifts between the two schools (we received a gorgeous floral painting, made by one of the young students at Huaxia as well as brochures about Huaxia and Huaxia received a digital frame and photos from Ursuline as well as a framed photo marking our participation in the Confucius Classroom).

To ease the pain of goodbye, we shared a delicious butter cream cake, complete with two hugging girl bears. As you can see in the photos, goodbye was the hardest on our wonderful host students who became so close to their guest sisters in this very short time. Of course, we adults were pretty wrecked by the goodbye as well.

Happily, we are looking ahead to 2012 when we hope to be reunited with our Huaxia sisters! We are already planning for our Spring delegation to China and for the visit of a group from Huaxia in the Fall. We can't wait to be together again!

Learning from each other ...

 Oh, how much we enjoyed and learned this past week! Despite the shortness of our time with our friends from China, we were able to learn and experience much! On Monday, the teachers made a wonderful presentation to our faculty about life and curriculum at Huaxia Academy - we were delighted to learn that they have a new class in "International Understanding" and also that they are becoming a laptop school - just like UA! 

The Huaxia students gave a thrilling presentation in the UCPA as part of Chinese culture week where they talked about their daily lives and also about their favorite things (such as moon cakes - yumm!).  One of the visiting teachers taught a chemistry lesson about how to make tofu and the Chinese culture teacher taught a lesson about China's many festivals.

We also did our best to share lessons with our guests and a favorite lesson was in Mr. Thompson's Printmaking class where the students made prints of an Ursuline sunburst. They later received the same print on T-shirts which they immediately put on for the excursion to the State Fair.

So little time - so much to learn!

One highlight of our time with our Chinese guests was our visit to the State Fair of Texas. We had a fantastic time introducing our friends to true Texas culture - including a warm greetng by an authentic cowboy named Larry and a fantastic food we celebrate known as the corny dog.

Accompanying the delegation were Mrs. Giraud and Mrs. Yung from the Math department as well as our students, Gabby and Lauren. It's hard to say what we enjoyed the most - the butter sculpture, the African acrobats or all of the special foods (the turkey legs & ice cream were favorites). The very best part of our day was just being together and laughing together!

Visiting Peak Academy

Today we had a wonderful time when our Chinese delegation visited the 2nd grade scholars at Peak Academy. They were accompanied by our UA Mandarin IV students and together they presented lessons on Chinese language and culture. The 2nd graders were so sharp and enthusiastic!  And such quick learners! By the time we left, the young students were experts on using chop sticks, counting from 1-10 in Mandarin and singing several Chinese tunes.

It was a great experience for our students to be the teachers and we hope that the children had at least half of the fun we had! It was a very special day and we thank Peak Academy for welcoming our friends from China to their fantastic school!

Welcome Huaxia!

 

Oh what a special day we had at Ursuline today as we welcomed our sister school, Huaxia Girls' School, from Beijing. The Chinese Delegation, made up of 14 students and 4 teachers, arrived on Saturday after spending a couple of days in Los Angeles. The entire UA student body participated in the welcome parade which required our guests to walk through the school. It was extremely festive and joyful to see our hundreds of UA students cheering, holding balloons & welcome signs, twirling ribbons and blowing bubbles in honor of our guests. Even Honey Buns, our school mascot, helped by giving hugs and gifts to our friends.

This is the first visit of our Chinese sister school since 2008 so it was also the first experience of a Chinese delegation for most of our students. As you can see,even though our time together has just begun, our bonds of love and sisterhood are already very strong.

We are so happy to have our Huaxia sisters here and we look forward to the awesome week ahead!