The Infamous World Expo

From the school, we drove directly to the World Expo. It was something I had been truly excited to see because I had heard so much about it. Needless to say, it didn't dissapoint, and I don't really think I understood the true scope of the place until I was inside. The Expo was enormous— each country had huge buildings, beautifully decorated, woven between streets with vendors and restaurants. All of it was so clean and modern and permanent-looking that I had to remind myself that the Expo was only open from spring until fall.


Many of the larger pavilions had huge lines with 2-3 hour waits, and so we only visited the insides of a few of the African countries. However, just walking around and viewing everything from the outside was enough, for the buildings came in every size and form. One was huge and spherical, made entirely of glass; one was decorated with hundreds of snowflakes; one was jungle camouflaged with branch-like rods acting as supports; one had a spiraled, rooftop-road down which bicycles pedaled; one was composed completely out of tiny, fluttering mirrors like a great glittering crystal. The China pavilion was incredible—it overshadowed everything around it; several stories high it blossomed into the air like a bright-red upsides-down pyramid.

The funniest thing at the Expo was that for once, people saw us as the minorities, the strange foreigners. Strangers kept running up to us to take pictures, especially to Max and Tara, the two blondes. They were a new species all together. I was a wild time to run around a place that looked like Epcot x 1,000, taking pictures and seeing all kinds of exotic people and things. I was absolutely awestruck.