Kidijah Bowers does not know what to expect when she arrives in China this summer, but she does know one thing: “I will learn a lot.”

Bowers who is in the middle of a fund-raising campaign to pay for the $6,000 trip is a ninth grade student at Chiefland High School where she plays varsity basketball, participates in Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA), is an active member of BETA Club which promotes student leadership, academic achievement and character building; and an active member of Students Working Against Tobacco. She also plays city league softball and is involved in the Youth Department at St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church where she tutors other students.

She and her family have raised $2,500 by hosting a dance at Tommy Usher Center and two fun days at Frank Buie Park. There will be another fun day with a horseshoe tournament and water games, including a slide that ends in a pool on April 4 at Buie Park.

Nominated for the People to People Ambassador program, Bowers will be the second student from Chiefland chosen to participate in the 17-day trip this summer. Students in the program live with host families participating in daily activities around the home and visit important sites like the Great Wall, the Forbidden Palace and the site of the 2008 Olympics.

I want to go because it’s something new,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to go to different places far from here.

“I want to see all the stuff I haven’t seen yet and learn new stuff.”

One of the new things she will learn before going to China is to use chopsticks to eat and some phrases in Chinese.

The one thing she wants to see is the Great Wall. “I want to see it because I’ve seen it on the screen and in social studies books,” she said.

Her nomination to the program was made anonymously, but Bowers said she suspects it is because “I made good grades and have a good attitude.

”Both are achievements she attributes to the care of her parents Katrina and Marlow Bowers.

She smiles as she talks about her father the log truck driver and her mother, who works at the Central Florida Community Action Agency.

“I’ve got good parents,” she says when asked why she is such a high achiever. “I say that because they’re strict.

“They’re careful about the people I hang out with.”

Her goals are equally high in her life. Bowers wants to be an orthodontist. She’s wearing braces, fresh from a trip to the orthodontist. “I like it. I like seeing what they’re doing (in the orthodontics office).”

But to do that she will have to leave town again, this time for college. She hopes to attend Florida Atlantic University where her uncle, Cortez Gent is a standout football player.

She is not fazed by a downward economy saying if folks are wavering in supporting the trip to China, “They might want to meet me.”

“I would tell them people from Chiefland don’t get to do that and that’s why I am going.”