Beautiful Montana

"A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both."

-James Madison





I thought the weather in North Carolina was fickle, but Montana is on a wholly different level of capriciousness. For the first three weeks of my time here, it would be sunny one minute, raining the next. And sometimes, just to confuse matters, both at the same time! We had the biggest snow I saw here on June 11th. And then, having had our snowball fights, two days later it was in the 70s and hasn't varied since. I've been capitalizing on the perfect weather, and I've gone backpacking the past two weekends. I couldn't be happier.






I've also been playing the piano a lot. It's really nice to be able to sit down and play whenever I like, and the other ranch residents seem to like it, which is flattering. We watched a movie last week called Once - it's an indie Irish film. One of the tracks of music won an Oscar, so I found sheet music for it. It's called Falling Slowly, and I get requests to play it a lot.

The office is still going well. We had a party in my Key Votes department on Friday, because we interns have been so amazingly efficient. We are completely caught up on this year's work, so they've had to give us work to do from last year!

Politics Everywhere!

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

-Thomas Jefferson



Above is the view of the ranch from a nearby hill where one can occasionally get cell phone reception. I didn't have luck that day, but I'll try again next time I'm up there. The little brown-roofed building to the right of the lake are our lodge and rooms. The building to the left of those buildings and just a little bit set away from the lake is the office.

It's been an exciting week! The Montana primaries were on Tueday, so there was a flurry of activity (and snow, actually!) The most exciting part of the week by far was attending a speech by Bill Clinton. He was campaigning for Hillary, so he came to Anaconda, pop. 9,000. Anaconda is only about an hour away, so we took a van full of people to see his speech. It was a small crowd, so I had the chance to shake his hand! He is truly an amazing speaker.


We also had a group of foreign journalists come visit Project Vote Smart. They were also here to observe the primaries and learn more about the American election system. The local news station did a story on it, which you can find at the link below. You can catch a brief glimpse of me shaking hands with one of the journalists at the beginning.

http://www.montanasnewsstation.com/Global/story.asp?S=8435131

Work is going well, if tedious at times. Project Vote Smart runs a database of nonpartisan information for voters, and I'm in the legislative research department, aka Key Votes. I spend my day tracking pieces of key legislation, entering in votes once they've been taken, and summarizing bills. Bills can be the most frustrating part of the job. Some of the most confusing pieces of work I've ever had to decipher. I'm learning a lot about politics at the state level though, as I generally work on state, not Congressional, bills. I'll put PVS's website here again: feel free to check on your local Senator or representative - maybe I entered in a few of their votes!

www.votesmart.org

The other interns are great. We have costume days on Friday, and so far the best has been Geek Day. Some people joked we should just come to work wearing what we normally wear.



Summer has still not come to Montana. It snowed today, and yesterday, and the day before that! We had six power outages on Wednesday, but only two yesterday. :) One of them lasted a couple hours ago though, which made cooking dinner a bit of an adventure. Besides no electricity, there was also of course no water. We managed though, with some stellar chocolate chip banana bread to show for it.

Project Vote Smart

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people."

-John Adams


Well, one and a half books, two layovers, and three airlines later, I finally arrived in gorgeous Montana! Unfortunately, my luggage did not. It only took about 24 hours for it to be delivered though, and I was fine without it in the interim. Aside from that minor piece of bad luck though, I'm having a fantastic time! The ranch is beautiful (one of the white-capped mountains in the picture is the Continental Divide,) everyone here is super nice, and there are so many fun things to do! Besides the hiking, horse-back riding, canoeing, etc. that I was planning for, everyone really likes sports. I'm not a big athlete, but I've played volleyball, basketball, and I'm even playing left field for our coed softball team. We played a game on Tuesday against another local team, and we won - and I got two runs!

Not surprising perhaps, but the other interns are also a bit nerdy. I've found fellow board game fanatics, and I think we're planning to put on a musical in a few weeks. It really is like political summer camp!


There is no cell phone service on the ranch, but I've been told if you climb to the top of the hill in the picture above, sometimes you can get reception. I climbed the hill, but I haven't tried the cell service yet.

On my second day here, we went on a short hike around the property, and we saw this porcupine in one of the old homesteads. That's the only wildlife I've seen in person, but driving home from softball practice I've seen a bear and a herd of elk! I can't wait to see more wildlife in person, although maybe not a bear. :)

The altitude here is about 6,000 feet, so I'm always embarrassingly out of breath. I hope to get used to it soon. It's also pretty cold still. Last week is snowed! Now is not so bad; 50s with rain generally. I've ben assured that soon it will warm up and turn into a nice dry summer heat.

More about Project Vote Smart in the next post, but I highly recommend you check out their website in the meantime: www.votesmart.org

And so it begins...

I haven't left to do anything exciting quite yet. I'm still packing in Charlotte, but I thought I'd reacquaint myself with blogging before I go, not to mention share some pictures of my latest pottery creations, of which I am inordinately proud. I didn't make much this semester, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. (And they're all about as small as they look.)


I won't have a chance to do pottery over the summer, as the closest town (at 30 miles away,) has a population of about...900! Somehow I'm guessing that even if I had a way of getting over there frequently, they don't have a community pottery studio. I'll be more than occupied with hiking, horseback riding, and other outdoor pursuits on the ranch though.


While I'm posting random pictures, I thought I'd share this one of my brother Ryan and me. We went to the Nascar Speedstreet festival in downtown Charlotte yesterday. It was fun, even if we didn't get free t-shirts like we'd hoped for. :)


Coming soon: beautiful mountain scenes and tales from the battlefront for democracy!

Xiamen University

I have neglected to post some pictures of my beautiful campus here in Xiamen. Xiamen University is known for being one of the most beautiful university campuses in China, and although I have little to compare it against, I believe it's an accurate reputation.


This is the center of campus, as seen from the 9th floor of my dormitory.

This is the view from my bedroom - the seaside! It's very lovely, but as you can see, it's often quite foggy (smoggy.)

The other direction, still from my bedroom window.

They have lots of statues and sculptures around, including these computer mice on the beach. I think they're so funny - a great touch of whimsy!


Some mornings I run or walk along the beach. The weather is nearly always perfect, and it's fun to watch the Chinese people doing Tai Qi in the morning or taking a swim (even if I would never dare to do so!)

This may be my last post, as I leave for Beijing early Wednesday morning. I should have some awesome pictures and experiences from my time there, but I may not have time to post about it until after returning home.

上海！ (Shanghai!)

ChHappy Thanksgiving all! 10 of my friends and I went to Shanghai for our Thanksgiving break, and I had a fantastic time! Shanghai is a fantastic city - very cosmopolitan and Western. It's already gone on my list of cities I'd like to live in.


Here's a picture of the skyline - the pink building on the left side is the Oriental Pearl Tower - it's a very famous icon of the city.


We ate Western food pretty much over meal except Thanksgiving, oddly enough. This was our Thanksgiving dinner pretty standard Chinese fare, actually. No turkey, or even poultry to speak of. (And definitely no pie, which was the saddest of all.) It was delicious and cheap though, and we enjoyed ourselves.



I actually have some pictures of myself that I thought I would include this time. Here I am enjoying a steaming dish of rice and soy-braised beef. Yum!


We did some serious shopping while in Shanghai. There was an incredible range of options, from the Western brand name knock-offs, to very Chinese jade and pearls, to 9 story malls filled with familiar stores from home. This picture is from one part of a giant street of shops we spent the day at.


Gingerbread lattes at Starbucks are lovely, but we couldn't resist picking up some street food for breakfast on our way to the metro. Shanghai has a great metro system, actually. It was extremely convenient, clean, cheap and easy to understand. I had it figured out by the second day, and the well-translated English signs everywhere were a big help.


As you might expect a city of 17 million to be, Shanghai was extremely crowded. It was also filled with Western ex-pats. It was an off role reversal - normally when we travel in China, we Westerners are stared at by the Chinese people. Here in Shanghai though, we Westerners marveled at the huge amount of other Westerners, while all the natives didn't even bat an eyelash.


Shanghai at night is also quite a sight - lots of gorgeous architecture.


The Oriental Pearl at night - much less gaudy, in my opinion.



One last picture of me, with some of my friends. We're staring at the Oriental Pearl, actually, having just crossed under the Huangpu river via an underwater tunnel.

Temple of Ancestor Worship

Before the main point of my post, I wanted to share with you all how safe I feel in China. It's amazing - besides needing to of course watch my belongings and zip up my purse (pickpockets are a big problem,) I always feel safe. China has extremely low violent crime levels, and I always feel safe walking home after dark from a local internet cafe. When my parents were in town, one girl who was worried about moving to San Francisco for university, was horrified to learn she shouldn't walk home along at night - it's just not something you have to worry about, especially in a place like Xiamen. It helps that everything is open very late here, and there are always people around, no matter where you are or what time.

We visited a series of temples with my Chinese culture class last week. First we visited a local temple to a local, Fujian/Southeast coastal China deity - the Holy Mother. Then we visited a beautiful Daoist temple. The last temple though, a temple for ancestor worship, was be far the most interesting. It incorporated Buddhist and Daoist elements into its style and worship methods, and the decorations were fascinating.



Along one wall were dozens of paintings depicting scenes from famous Chinese moralistic stories. They are designed to teach filial piety. The one I have included above shows the story of a son who, because every night mosquitoes kept him and his family from sleeping well, took off all his clothes one night so as to attract all the mosquitoes to himself and allow his parents to sleep.

I am, unfortunately, not sure who the figures in the painting represent. Venerable town ancestors, I would guess. I just liked the painting, which was on the door going into the temple.


The amazing things about nearly every site we visit in China, whether historical building, temple, or tourist shop, is that they are all inhabited. The temple of ancestor worship had beds along the opposite wall, but here you can see their table and cooking area. This was not in a back room, but simply in the temple proper.



Here is someone's bicycle leaning against part of the entranceway.