World Expo

While we were in Shanghai, we had the awesome opportunity to visit the World Expo, also known as the World's Fair. Basically a chance for countries to show off to each other, the World Expo is a gathering of pavilions (or semi-permanent structures) from almost every country in the World. Basically you could get a taste of the world in one city. It was so much fun. We spent almost two whole days there!

In front of the Nepal Pavilion



My friend Brooke and me with the China Pavilion in the background. (And yes, there was a group of Japanese tourists standing behind the person who took this picture, so we ended up on a bunch of Japanese cameras as well... Creepers.)



The Morocco Pavilion



And finally, a shot of the cityscape of Shanghai. It was so beautiful!

So I Climbed the Great Wall...

I know it's been a while since I blogged; I didn't realize that Blogger would be blocked by the "Great Firewall." Tragic, I know. But I thought I'd still post some of my favorite memories from the trip.

One of the stand-out days was when I fulfilled a life's dream of going to the Great Wall of China. It was pretty sweet. We visited just a part of it when we were in the Beijing area, but it seemed to be a popular place to go. It was totally crowded, but still way fun to see.



I think one of the things that surprised me the most was how steep it was. The wall literally just followed the mountains and was quite the hike to make in my flip flops...

Something I love about historical places is the way they make you think about those that came before you. So many people lived and died for this wall. Hardly any of the workers ever got to see the work completed. I wonder if these men could have known that in hundreds of years a girl from a country that didn't even exist back then would come and snap a few pictures, walk around, and leave. They couldn't have. They just did their job because that's what they had to do.



And when we came down off the wall, there was a camel. Kinda random, but of course we had to take pictures!