ALUMNI HAPPY HOUR... or coffee gathering

Alumni around the world continue to gather to connect, and we held our last happy hour in January!

Given the many (many) time zones alumni live in, we have been playing with the time of our gatherings - most recently friends all the way from 10:00 AM in Washington, DC to 4:00 PM in Berlin.

We are planning to meet once again in the coming weeks so stay tuned and JOIN US!

And, alumni are always welcome to join our programs, whether virtual or in-person in the not too distant future!

CAREER SKILLS with WIIT

On Wednesday, April 14, we were delighted to welcome a highly accomplished and engaging group of professionals from the Association of Women in International Trade (WIIT) Charitable Trust to share about the career skills that helped them move forward with their professional goals.  We are grateful our residents and alumni could take advantage of such a great conversation!

RESIDENT HOLIDAYS

International Student House resident scholars have been highly creative in connecting during the colder months. Resident Rempee Kalia has made it her particular mission to celebrate the holidays - decorating the House and organizing events.

For Valentine's Day, residents organized an evening gathering where they painted flowers, landscapes, and of course DC institutions. And, March was of course a celebration of St. Patrick's Day, along with Holi celebrations!

DAFNE DAHLE

The Hague -- Roughly two decades ago, I travelled to the International Student House in Washington DC full of excitement of what was to come. As a law student and someone who had travelled the world, I confidently considered myself quite wise. The five months that followed immersed me in a wondrous world where I encountered new people, languages, cultures, I learned about life, love and loss, and I gained at least five years of life experience.

Ten years later, I looked back on an exciting life as a lawyer, a stint at NATO, finally reaching my goal to work as a prosecutor, trying to fight the good fight, and… feeling incredibly tired. It became a major turning point: My life from now on, I decided, would focus on creating art, visual, verbal and vocal, striving to bring a little joy and light to the world. And hopefully, I would ‘Eat, Cry, Sleep’ no more.

Now it’s early 2021, the year after the year before. The anniversary of ‘the big decision’ came and went. Inspiration came and went. People entered my life and others’ paths diverted. Tears flowed, then they dried. And personal growth knocked on my door unrelentingly. 2020 taught me about life, love and loss without being able to leave my proverbial backyard. It invited me to embrace uncertainty, define travel in new and different ways, but foremost it helped me understand that sharing is indeed caring – our time, our resources, our stories, ourselves.

One Sunday last January I was welcomed in once again by the International Student House DC, for an afternoon of encountering new people, languages and cultures. A grid of friendly faces looked back at me, no one I recognized, but heart-warmingly familiar nonetheless. This time I felt indeed wiser, assuredly acknowledging I know so little but realizing that I will continue to grow and learn as long as I remain open and incurably curious.

If you feel inspired to do so, please reach out. I would love to hear your story. (Instagram: @dafnedahle)

HAL SHARPE

Quebec City -- Having graduated from the Liberal Studies Program at Georgetown University in 1983, the plan for fellow International Student House alumni Peter Muyoyeta from Zambia, Rick Harris from Ohio, and me, a North Carolina native, was to have a reunion at the Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea in 1988. Those plans to get together didn't work out. This is inasmuch as each of us was "getting on" with his own life, and not one of us had become a millionaire so that we could pay the other's airfare to Korea or to anywhere else.

Rick, Hal, Honorine, and Peter at the House

Fast forward to 2016. Honorine, Peter's first wife had died on the heels of having nearly won a seat in the Zambian Parliament. For me, this was a wake-up call. On the promise to Peter for us to get together in the future, I feared that words in the Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken", specifically, "Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back (to the idea)", would prove true.

So, I got the permission of my Ukrainian PhD wife Olga to take our 13-year-old son Pasha with me on an adventure of a lifetime: visiting my decades-long ISH friend Peter in sub-Saharan Africa. And on this adventure, it wasn't convenient for Rick to come, but I came close to talking yet another ISH alumnus - Windsor, ON author and attorney Terry Hall, to join us. Terry said, "Next time", and that next time may indeed come in 2022 for a possible trip back to Zambia with my daughter Sophie.

Meanwhile, it was an absolute joy to see Peter again, along with getting to know his new wife, their family, and national parks in the country. On the heels of having studied Microbiology at George Washington University, he today is a building contractor for medical practices. And yes, Pasha and I did Victoria Falls!

Looking back, living at the House broadened my horizons and heightened my curiosity about a world I wanted to learn more about. Among my experiences are having worked on a:

Cattle ranch in Wyoming (1983), with that job having been arranged by the father of fellow ISH alumnus Jennifer Zimdahl Galt;

Candidate for U.S. Congress in North Carolina's 2nd District (1990), during which campaign I regularly conferred with Herb Schmitz, long-time friend and Emeritus member and former member of the ISH Board of Directors; and  

Editor on the International Desk at Xinhua New Agency in Beijing (1992-93), with Hurong Liu, fellow ISH alumnus and Chinese journalist, having made the offer.

Olga, our two kids, and I have lived in Quebec City since 2009; otherwise, I'm CEO for a digital advertising start-up. Rick, his wife Heidi, and their two kids live in Houston, TX; he is CEO for a Chinese frozen food company. I'm still in touch with fellow ISH alumnus Johns Ellington. He, his wife Cindy, and two kids live in Raleigh, N.C.; Johns is a wealth management advisor for Franklin Street Partners.

I would like to be in touch with other fellow 1981-83 ISH alumni including Tariq from Saudi Arabia, and Mahesh from Mumbai, India... if anyone knows how to get in touch with them!