Beef Noodles and a Broader View

How accompanying SLUH students to Taiwan expanded my understanding of culture, connection and global citizenship.

By Dan Schulte ’93
SLUH Director of Security

Having taken Spanish as a junior high student, enrolling in any other language was really never an option for me when I first entered the halls of St. Louis U. High. I had the pleasure of having Señor Walker and Señor Thomá during my two years of Spanish, and that seemed to be the end of my foreign-language experience at SLUH.

Little did I know that one day I would return to work here, fall in love with a little island known as Taiwan, and learn just enough Mandarin to survive — or, more importantly, just enough to order a coffee.

My first foray into traveling to the other side of the planet came in 2018, when I met Chinese teacher Yude Huang. Yude is one of the most joyful people I have ever met, and he was passionate about sharing his native Taiwan with others. He was looking for someone to accompany him and some students to Taiwan that summer. Always a willing traveler, I volunteered.

After a few interruptions due to COVID, we finally found our way there in the summer of 2023.

Traveling with SLUH boys, along with a couple of students from Cor Jesu and St. Joseph’s Academy, was an experience I will never forget. Mountains, beaches, surfing, big cities, small villages, tea farms, volcanoes and enough beef noodle stew to feed the entire freshman class made me realize what a cultural gem Taiwan is. More importantly, the experience helped me become more of what SLUH asks its students to become: a global citizen.

But the trip also reminded me of something I had learned many times during my years at SLUH: the best part of this place has never really been the destination. It has always been the people.

I was nervous about traveling so far away, to a place I knew very little about, with a bunch of high school kids to watch over. What I found were some of the kindest and most welcoming people I could have hoped for. The students stayed with host families in Luodong Township, while Yude and I stayed nearby in a hotel across from a beautiful park that reminded me a lot of Forest Park. I developed friendships with our coordinating teachers, Theresa and Tina, that continue to this day. I learned to eat just about everything with chopsticks and eventually got used to drinking soft drinks without ice — which, I will admit, took some adjustment.

In 2024, I traveled back to Taiwan and had the opportunity to bring my son, Ben, who was then a rising junior at SLUH, along with about 20 other students. Watching him navigate a new country and a new culture — albeit from a safe distance so as not to embarrass him — filled me with more pride than I probably let him see. It took everything in me not to continually ask him how he was doing.

In 2026, I was fortunate enough to travel to Taiwan twice: once with four seniors during Senior Project and again in the early summer for our cultural exchange. Each trip brings fresh adventures, friendships and experiences — and, inevitably, a few new aches in my knees from all the hiking and sightseeing. It also brings new challenges to my waistline thanks to my continued inability to say no to beef noodle stew and mango shaved ice.

Showing students what it means to be a global citizen — and accidentally becoming one myself — has been one of the unexpected highlights of my time at SLUH. I came to these trips thinking I was there to help students experience another culture. What I didn't expect was how much those experiences would change me as well.

The world is a big place, and it is easy to stay comfortable in the small corner of it that we know. Traveling with our students has reminded me how important it is to step outside of that comfort zone — to listen, to be curious, to appreciate differences, and to realize how much we have in common with people who may live thousands of miles away and speak another language.

That, to me, is a big part of what a Jesuit education is supposed to do. We want our students to leave SLUH not only knowing more, but seeing more — to understand that there is a world beyond themselves, appreciate the experiences and perspectives of others, and recognize their responsibility to be Men for Others wherever they go.

I may have entered SLUH thinking that Spanish was the end of my language journey. Instead, years later, I found myself halfway around the world, eating beef noodle stew, ordering coffee in Mandarin, and learning alongside our students.

Not a bad journey for a kid who thought he was done with learning.