Archive for October, 2014

The Guangxi Trip…

Sunday, October 12th, 2014

So the excursion organized by our program this semester was to the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region—

okay quick and hopefully not too confusing lesson about China and its autonomous regions:

China has 34 administrative divisions, 22 of which are provinces and 5 are autonomous regions (the other divisions are the 4 municipalities, 2 special administrative regions, and Taiwan, but since you have access to Google and I have to make do with Bing, I think you can look those up yourself). China is also home to 56 ethnic groups, with 91.59% of the population belonging to the  (according to Wikipedia), which leaves less than 10% of the population to fill up the other 55 ethnic groups. Now, tying this all back together with the autonomous regions, in order to become a governor of an autonomous region, you must be of a relevant ethnic minority. For example, in order to be governor of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, you would have to be of the Zhuang minority. That’s pretty much the only difference between the autonomous regions and regular provinces.

Oookay, my surprise Chinese history lesson is complete for now—

Anyway, it was a very cool trip, we visited the “rice terraces” of Ping’An, the Li River in Yangshuo County, and the street and night markets in Guilin, not to mention the Reed Flute Cave, Camel Rock, and we held monkeys and peacocks! While we were still very much jetlagged and the whole trip involved just ridiculous amounts of walking, it was all still very enchanting.

These are some pictures of the Longji Rice Terraces (Longji means dragon’s back). We were in Ping’An which is super close to Guilin, the big city we went to in Guangxi. Again, Google is your friend. I really enjoyed seeing the rice terraces; they were beautiful but also not like anything we really have in America (*as far as I know) and it was amazing to be able to climb them and take these pics—which really don’t do the place justice. Of course, Claudia and I had the brilliant idea to try and climb onto one of the rice terraces. And we made it, I’ll have you know. Our shoes, however…were not so lucky.

IMG_8903

IMG_8866

IMG_9153

IMG_8900

IMG_9132

IMG_9207

IMG_9158

IMG_9381

IMG_8870

 After leaving the Longji Rice Terraces (we stayed there for 1 night and 1 day), we stayed a night in Guilin, which had a very cool street and night market. We did a little tourist-ing and a little shopping, fed some fish, held some Peacocks.. After our stay in Guilin we took a boat down the Li River—which is famous for being the place on the back of the Chinese 20 yuan (the currency here)—and we saw many land marks that line the river, such as the “9 Painted Horses Hill” and the “Five Finger Mountain.” We took the Li River to Yangshuo County, where it rained almost the entire time we were there, though it cleared up enough for us to visit the Camel Rock, Moon Hill, and Banyan Tree (where we held monkeys!). We looked at the shops there for a little bit and the next day we visited the Reed Flute Cave, which was lit up with all sorts of colorful lights and fun names for the rock formations. We ended the trip with another four-hour trip back to Beijing so that we could be ready for school to start the next week.

 

IMG_9228

ClaudiaCam_Guilin_9.14 187

ClaudiaCam_Guilin_9.14 196

IMG_9040

IMG_9270

IMG_9044

IMG_9247

IMG_9290

IMG_9277

IMG_9136

IMG_9293

ClaudiaCam_Guilin_9.14 062

IMG_9189

ClaudiaCam_Guilin_9.14 166

IMG_9179

IMG_9209

ClaudiaCam_Guilin_9.14 147

ClaudiaCam_Guilin_9.14 143

ClaudiaCam_Guilin_9.14 152Seriously look at how cool these monkeys are ^^^

 

Hopefully more posts with pics to come.

~Courtney

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

China Group…

Thursday, October 9th, 2014

If nothing else, I figure I’ll mention who I’ll be spending time with in the next few months:

grouppng1 grouppng10grouppng2 grouppng3 grouppng4grouppng5 grouppng6 grouppng7grouppng8 grouppng9

So, OBVIOUSLY, we’ve got a pretty fabulous group here, which is a good thing seeing as we’ll all be living together at least until December. So shown above—alphabetically since we are apparently incapable of standing in any consistent order—is Alyssa, Bineta, Brandon, Claudia, Courtney, Daniel (actually, he’s not in any of these pictures since he didn’t arrive in China until last week), and Rachel. There’s also Patrick and Jessica who are our group coordinators.

C2Selfie1

 

This is Claudia and I (hopefully by now you know which one I am…).

She’s my roomie for the next two semesters!

We met last year at school, before we knew that we were both going to China, so I guess you could say we really lucked out.

I love having her in China, I would be consistently lost without her (in the most literal way possible.)

 

 

 

 

 

~Courtney

 

 

Okay, okay…

Wednesday, October 8th, 2014

I WILL START POSTING MORE FREQUENTLY.

OKAY MOM?

ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?

LOOK, I’M MAKING A BLOG POST.

LOOK AT ME, DOING AS I’M TOLD.

YOU SHOULD BE PROUD.

~Courtney