Meet the Team - Megan Church

Megan is up this week discussing many hot topics.  Enjoy her interview!

Meet the Team - Allison Kotlar

Allison sits down to talk about her family, Edna, and many other things!  Enjoy her interview.

Meet the Team - Seana Stoia

Seana is on the hot seat this week.  Enjoy her interview!

Meet the Team - Katy Martyn

Get to know Katy this week!!  Enjoy her interview!

Meet the Team - Gabi Florek

Gabi is up for Meet the Team this week.  Enjoy her interview!

Meet the Team - Bri Bricher

Enjoy getting to know Bri this week.  It was a great interview!

Meet the Team - Christen Bounsall

This week, enjoy getting to know Christen Bounsall, or Bouncy, as she is know to our team.  Thanks!

Meet the Team - Colleen Campbell

Colleen sits down to talk about her family, future, talents, and our team.  Enjoy the blog!

Meet the Team - Chelsea Cole

Enjoy getting to know Chelsea Cole this week!

Meet the Team - Emily Madden

Watch Emily as she discusses Wyoming, Bulldogs, and Rome.  Enjoy this weeks interview!  

Meet the Team - Brooke Hagemann

This week, Brooke sits down to talk about a wide variety of subjects.  Enjoy her interview!

Meet the Team - Marleyna Bustamante

This week, Marleyna sat down and told us a little bit about herself and her family.  Enjoy getting to know another member of our team!

Meet the Team - Christy Allen

Welcome to the new "Meet the Team" segment of our blog.  Every week, we will interview a player in order for you to get to know them better.  This week, Christy Allen sat down and told us about herself and her experience at UD.  Enjoy!  

Rome!

This summer, Emily Madden, a junior from Torrington, WY, studied at our University of Dallas campus in Rome.  The study abroad program in Rome is very popular at UD.  Students can go for a semester or six weeks during the summer.  Emily decided the summer was the best time for her and here is her experience first hand.

Rome: 

           One of the many reasons I went to UD was for its notorious Rome program. I had been looking forward to studying abroad for two years and this summer it finally became a reality. I spent two weeks traveling Europe with my family and six weeks studying in Rome and, within those two months, I experienced the most eventful and enjoyable two months of my entire life.

            It started the day after finals (which one can only fathom how difficult it was to focus on those) when my family and I flew to Dublin, Ireland. While there, we took a two-hour train ride across the entire country to Galway, Ireland, only to rent a car to drive to the infamous Cliffs of Moher. I’m not sure if my country biasedness comes into play or not but I personally preferred the countryside to the city of Dublin. The Ireland countryside is overwhelmingly beautiful. The driving is not. Driving on the left-hand side of the road was comical yet nerve-wracking but, nonetheless, still something one should try if given the chance.

            After two days freezing in the Ireland rain, we flew to Paris where it was still chilly but much more to my liking. I loved Paris. There’s just something about seeing the Eiffel Tower and the Mona Lisa in real life that is almost indescribable. As a family we spent four days in Paris but I was fortunate enough to go back a second time on my five-day trip with some of my classmates. I was amazed at how quiet and clean Paris was compared to Rome. Also, the stereotype of Frenchmen being rude and hating tourists is completely false; I would say that would be more correct for an Italian.

            After Paris, my family and I went to Rome, Florence, and Pisa. Pisa was tiny and quaint but the only thing of notable existence is in fact the leaning tower of Pisa. I spent an entire thirty minutes in that town, all of which were spent trying to perfect the famous “holding up the leaning tower” picture from just the right angle.

            I was more than excited to have been there two weeks before thinking that I would have a head start on the “jet-lagged” feeling. Little did I know that in the first week of classes I was going to be bombarded with readings and events out the wazoo. In the first five days, we (as a class) celebrated the feast of Corpus Christi with Pope Francis outside the Basillica of St. John Lateran, we walked the 6 mile Appia Antica (the earliest and strategically most important Roman roads of the ancient republic) all the way to the catacombs where we read the Martydom of Polycarp and finished with mass INSIDE of a Catacomb, and we traveled a short way to the antiquated towns of Nemi and Castel Gandolfo where we witnessed a fragolini festival (tiny strawberries) and the Apostolic Palace of Castel Gandolofo which serves as the summer residence and vacation retreat for the pope. That was just the first five days.

            In a matter of six short weeks, I was blessed enough to see the Sistine Chapel (twice), the Colosseum, the Spanish steps, climb St. Peter’s Dome, celebrate mass inside of St. Peter’s, the chains that held St. Peter, the Pantheon, and Michelangelo’s Pietà. At one point, I realized that I was so accustomed to all of these historical and astounding sites that I would go into Rome without my camera. I was no longer a tourist.

            As a class, we took a weekend trip to Assisi and Florence. I was able to see the church that St. Francis built and also climb two miles uphill to see the hermitage of St. Francis. In Florence, we toured the Uffizi and saw the illustrious statue of David. Personally, I think this statue is severely underrated. It was breathtaking.

            On the one free weekends that we were given, two of my classmates and myself travelled to Cinque Terre, which is located in Northern Italy. Cinque Terre literally means “The Five Lands” and it is comprised of five small villages. This is arguably one of my favorite places in the entire world. It was so perfect that it almost looked artificial.  

            During my five-day independent travel, I went to Paris and Barcelona. After seeing so many baroque churches in Italy and France, it was shocking to see la Sagrada Familia. It was designed by Antoni Guadi and, although it is incomplete to this day, his combination of Gothic and curvilinear art noveau forms make this church the most intense basilica that I’ve ever seen.

            After Barcelona, we returned to Rome with twenty-four hours left before taking our final and only a short forty-eight hours before we were to depart Due Santi Campus. It all happened so fast.

            As I look back on this trip, it all seems so surreal. For six weeks, it was normal for me to walk past something historic and probably not realize it. It was normal for me to sit outside of the Mensa, over-look UD’s vineyard and ancient Rome whilst sipping a caramel macchiato and eating the delicious pasta made fresh by our precious Italian chefs while simultaneously having theological discussions.  It was all such a blessing.

            To those who have been apart of the Rome program, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you have yet to go to Rome, you have something to look forward to. If you are still deciding, I beg of you, GO! It will change your life. 

 FC Barcelona Stadium

 Manarola, Cinque Terre, Italy

 On top of a castle in Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy

 Court on the Due Santi Campus

 Light show in Paris

 UD basketball sweatshirt in Dublin, Ireland!

We're Back!!

We would like to apologize since it has been almost six months since our last post!  We are back now and can't wait to update you on our team.  Our first post is from Christy Allen, our senior post player from Michigan.  She is writing about her trip to Haiti she took earlier this summer.  Enjoy the post from her perspective.

Haiti:
Recently I just returned from a mission trip in Haiti. Even though I was only there for a week it was definitely a life changing experience and I look forward to going back next summer, or somewhere else equally as needy.

            While I was there we spent probably four of the days at a children’s home run by the Missionaries of Charity. The house was home to close to 300 severely malnourished babies and toddlers on the first floor, and 20 or so orphans on the second floor. Our responsibilities while here were to feed the kids, change their diapers, replace their sheets if they were soiled, change their clothes, and really most importantly get them out of their cribs and hold them or play with them. The second floor housed the orphans and they were healthy but our responsibility with them was solely to play with them and show them some love since many of the kids had lost their families in the earthquake.

            We also spent a day  to day and a half at “The House for the Dying”. This was the most traumatic day for me. The house is a large hospice care for hundreds of dying individuals. They are all dying for various reasons, many of them have tuberculosis, some with AIDS, others with infections, cancer, and various other illnesses. The really striking thing about being here is it is much dirtier and darker than any hospice or hospital we would ever see here. But also every single person in this building is going to die, and of illnesses and many things that are completely curable things here in the states, but for them it means certain death. It was really hard to spend much time here because the older woman are so happy which is hard to understand because they know they are dying. And also there are many children here as well.

            Its very striking and heart wrenching to walk into a place where every person you see will die within months, and yet people are smiling and singing, and the children are playing and coloring. This was definitely a very hard experience, and really difficult to come to terms with the fact that I can’t help them even though there are successful treatments out there.

            The last place that we went, and where I enjoyed being the most, or rather learned the most from being there was the tent city. The particular one we went to, because there are many all over the country, was home to 20,000 families so 60,000 people. The conditions here were terrible, the “tents” were made of tarps and sticks, or branches, or anything that they were able to find. My group helped build benches for the two empty school houses that they had built on previous missions as well as “beds” which where just boards raised off the ground so that they didn’t have to sleep on the floor in the dirt and mud.

            We also spent a lot of time with the kids playing soccer and making crafts, things that they cannot do very often because they can’t afford the supplies of even a soccer ball.

            There was one day that we brought 600 pairs of shoes, couple hundred bars of soap, and piles of clothes to hand out to the people living there. Before we knew it there were hundreds of people crowded around the little one room schoolhouse we were in pushing and becoming aggressive to get in. I was in the back of the schoolhouse where there was an opening. As things began to get more out of control, around 40 grown men gathered outside that window and were trying to jump in to get the shoes. I had to stand there and pretty much throw them back out the window. This day was the most intense experience because as things got more chaotic and a seeming riot was forming you realized the disparity of the situation for these people. Who knows the next time they will have a chance at a decent pair of shoes. The escalation of the situation was not out of greed but out of pure survival instinct to take advantage of the necessities while they were within their reach. It was a very eye opening experience.

            The entire week was full of different sights, scenes, and experiences. All of which make me appreciate everything I have here living in the US and everything I take for granted every single day. Being there also inspired me with a spirit to do my part in meeting the needs of the world, since I have been so blessed in my life, its my duty to help those that are not as fortunate because of circumstances way beyond their control.

            I cannot wait to go back to either Haiti again, or maybe the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, or Honduras. The next time I go back though I’ll definitely be bringing some of my teammates with me, its an experience I think that is beneficial to anyone and everyone! 

- Christy Allen

 
Enjoy some pictures from the trip!