a "world" expo

we went to the shanghai "world expo" this weekend. we were already in shanghai for a frisbee tournament, and grant took an extra day off, so we thought, "what the heck."

here's what i learned about the world:

*moldovan wine isn't that great

*bulgaria has a ton of history that i know nothing about

*the ARV drug for HIV was developed in the czech republic

*the caribbean countries had nothing to display on their shelves, but lots of pictures of beaches

*zimbabwe has nice waterfalls (but there was no information about the country at all!)

*sudan's first exhibit was their peace agreement from 2003 (ironic?)

*somalia has sharks and camels (displayed together)

*chinese people push and shove and push and shove some more when they're in a line

*and they're not afraid to queue for hours and hours and hours to get into a pavilion, get a stamp for their fake passport, and move on to the next one.

*in 5 hours, i'd guess we saw less than 20 foreign visitors to this "world" expo.

i realized it felt a bit like a massive version of epcot center in disneyworld. all of the countries show their glossy, pretty side and sometimes even perpetuate the stereotypes about their country! the exhibits that we saw were all really slick with no real content. and did i mention the lines?