Courtney's Cauldron

[pics incl] The first one is of prayer cards at a Shinto Temple. The other is Courtney in a kimono at a Japanese restaurant.

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.

 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.

Seriously look at how cool these monkeys are ^^^

Hopefully more posts with pics to come.

~Courtney

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

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.

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

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

For anyone who’s unaware (though, honestly, if you’ve managed to find this blog, you’re probably aware…) I’m in China now!

I left for China on September 11th and got here on Friday the 12th, so it’s been a little over a week since I landed and we’ve started getting settled in; our dorm has bathmats and wall-hangings now so it’s not as bare as it was when we first arrived.

We took an “excursion”—which ended up being sort of like a vacation within a vacation—last week to the Guangxi autonomous region in China; we visited PingAn, Guilin, Yangshuo, and took a tour down the Li River (to be perfectly honest the geography is all kind of confusing to me, so if you’re more interested in that, I strongly suggest you consult Google—or Baidu if you’re like me and are barred from using your favorite search engine.)

I will try to post pictures/videos of not only our excursion, but also of our dorm and campus life and other things we’ve done, but I don’t promise any semblance of regularity. Sorry? Not really.

Feel free to Skype/email/text/facebook message me all you want, but who knows if I’ll answer—Beijing is 14 hours ahead of Denver and Facebook is actually blocked here and my VPN isn’t consistent enough to be considered reliable—but go ahead and try anyway!

I’ll try and add more posts soon, maybe with pics.

~Courtney

Sailing for the first time would be an experience and memory in itself, but being part of our family means that we don’t do things halfway. So my first time sailing was also my first time flipping a sailboat. And my first time getting a ride from the coast guard.

After tipping the catamaran (google it), we (being Dad and myself) could not pull it back upright because, between the two of us, we didn’t weigh enough (or have enough upper body strength, whichever way you prefer to word it.) That, and in order to flip a boat back upright, the mast must face into the wind in order to pitch the sail out of the water. <Enter more boating jargon here.>

Long story short, after half a dozen attempts and assistance from the local coast guard, the boat washed onto a nearby beach shore. We proceeded to leave the boat there and the KOA we are staying at had to send a couple of people out to retrieve it.

Dad says he just wanted to “give me a memory I’ll never forget.” Great. Mission accomplished.

~Courtney

p.s. mom’s version

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!!!

And speaking of which, The Lorax is in theaters today.

~Courtney

I checked, and I’m surprised that neither my mom nor I have really blogged about Wish Week (granted, both of have made references to it: http://blog.scottsontherocks.com/blog/2011/03/03/make-a-wish-granted/) but I think it’s very worth explaining, so here it goes:

For the past 3 years at Rock Canyon, the students have gotten together and raised money for one week in order to grant a wish for a child of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

The first year, Harvey, age 17, wanted to become a pro photographer while she still had the time. They asked us to raise about $10,000. We raised $17,000. It was an emotional event and everyone was impressed by the amount of participation we had.

The second year we granted 10-year-old Taylor’s wish to go to the Coral Reef (his favorite movie was Finding Nemo and he wanted to see where it took place). We were well aware that a school near ours had up-ed us and raised $17,000. Our goal was 20. In just one week, our high school managed to raise $41,215.17! We nearly doubled the national record of a little less than $25,000!

By this year’s Wish Week, if you asked any random Rock Canyon student what their favorite time of the year was, they’d answer Wish Week. But of course, $41,000 dollars is hard to beat. We all pulled together, went to every fundraiser and raised money in the classes. $43,486.24. One week. It was the most sincere, loving, and powerful assembly I have ever gone to. We granted 5-year-old Natalie’s wish to go to Disney World with her family.

Wish Week is a way for our school to unite and show everyone, including ourselves, just how much we care and how much we can do.

~Courtney