Hangin with the Crown to the Prince of Nor to the Way

17th of May is a huge deal in Norway. It is a day where you eat as many ice creams as possible before you bulimically throw up, pretend you are in an eating contest where the food of choice is hot dogs, you parade around hailing your country with song, dance and a series of commercially driven toys in red, white and blue without seeming too nationalistic, and you wave to the King and Queen and whoever else shows up on the Royal Balcony. All this, just to celebrate the Norwegian constitutional day.

At expo we decided to mimic this day on May 28th as this is the day the expo center had handed us as our pavilion day. We had the great honor of hosting a series of even throughout the day, and the Norwegian Crown Prince was so lucky to have the chance to personally meet me. I even allowed him to shake my hand and relay my name in a slightly clumsy way halfway grinning and halfway staring in disbelief at this surprisingly good-looking man. All I could think was that I should pull out one of my very successful (or perhaps not SO successful) pickup lines along the lines of, "you must be exhausted cause you have been running through my dreams for quite some time". Then I remembered that he was married, with kids and a monarchy to reign over at some point in the future, and I decided to focus my attention elsewhere.

In all seriousness, it was a very successful day. We had the minister of trade and industry, Trond Giske graced us with his very noticable presence (he is much taller than I expected) and the Minister of Oil and Energy Terje Riis-Johansen also decided to pop by and have some important oil people in China. It is all about guanxi here in China, and I am sure they did a great job at creating good and sustainable contact with them. And if they didn't at least they got some good food from our very tasty restaurant.

At the end of a veeeeery long day at work we were very lucky to come by some tickets to an impressive concert that hosted the very young, talented and beautiful violinist Hemsing who played the violin like some sort of crazy angel. It was very beautiful, but very long and after a long and tiresome day at work I have to admit that she lulled me to sleep.. This concert was played with a couple of symphony orchestras and conducted by the cutest conductor I have ever seen in my life. He swayed and bopped and jumped and swirled and gave a very passionate speech that I am sure I would have greatly appreciated if I had been fully conscious. After this we had performances by Sissel Kyrkjebø who unfortunately had some problems with her voice but still sounded completely perfect in my very critical ears, Secret Garden with their newest version of Powered by Nature which was a perfect blend of beautiful and cheesy and will undoubtably be a hit in the Middle World. We also had a dance off between Norwegian "Frikare" and a chinese Kungfu group which was potentially great, but could perhaps use a little more coordination and flow. That is just one girls opinion though...

All this is one day makes for a pretty amazing day. Well done to everyone involved, and especially Maren who has been in charge of getting this whole day together. I would like to end with a: HIPP HIPP HURRRRRAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Trine:)

Walking in the Forest

Righty-o!
Upon request I will share with you the latest "news" at expo. Every day there is such incredible amounts of strange things that happen, that I am not entirely sure where to start. I gave you a little teaser in yesterdays post, so I suppose I will start there.

We had an interesting visitor two days ago at work. One of China's biggest movie stars, Maggie Chan, decided to pop by and check out our pavilion. I have to admit that I had no idea who she was but I still managed to become completely starstruck as I very unintelligently pranced and danced in front of her (note to self: when in presence of movie star, DO NOT DANCE). Thankfully I was not the only one. Team leader Øystein had taken upon the task of guiding her (I have a slight suspicion that he may have thrown a tantrum or paid someone so that he could be in charge of this task). The day before he came up to a couple of us and proclaimed, "do you guys realize who is coming tomorrow?? Do you know how much I loved this woman when I was younger?? Man... I think I need some chocolate". All in all, a good day at work. Oh yea, and the Austrian Prime Minister decided to show up unannounced but the Austrian security system attached itself to our speaker system making it sound like we were under attack or the pavilion roof was partially ripping at its seams. Needless to say we had to divert the PMs attention to another pavilion.

I know we talk about stamping an unusually large amount, but it is such a big part of our day, and a subject that causes so much aggression in our life that I just have to grind it into a powder that is so fine, hopefully I won't see it anymore. As I have already explained we have founded a 3 stamps/person rule. This for our visitors only means that they have to be creative. Two days ago there was a man dawdling outside our safety exit door where there is a very small opening underneath the door. Jeanette asked one of our chinese speaking guides to ask him what he was doing, and the diligent guide could after a few minutes of conversation report that he was waiting for his friend because he was going to pass about a hundred passports under the door...

In our private life we also encounter interesting and challenging situations. Cecilie from Bergen is a beautiful, cheerful and wonderful girl who went to get a manicure the other day. As she sat there she thought she was getting an abnormal amount of attention from the manicurists. She got extra pillows, a stool for her feet and a lot of pointing towards her abdomen area. After a while the two very excited ladies in the shop stuttered in perfect chinglish, "boy oh guhhr?". Confused and completely perplex her face twisted into a grimace that in Europe could only say "what the hell are you asking me? Are you calling me fat???", but in China this expression apparently translates into, "I'm not that far along yet, so I don't know". They followed with, "Husband Norwegian?" whereby Cecilie now nearly in tears could only reply, "yes". The final question before she decided to pretend to be on the phone for the rest of the torturous time was, "youh baby how many moths", "four" she replied without hesitation but with massive amounts of bitterness.

Why is it that when one person pees in the pavilion two more people just have to do something very similar. That's right. We've had our first experience with bodily fluids being dumped on our pavilion. One peeing incident in the fjord, one right outside the exit door, and an even more appropriate dumping of feces in the coastal area. I suppose the architects will be quite pleased when they hear this though. I don't believe I have fully explained our pavilion, but it is built up much like a forest with 15 trees as its pillars. The guests must have understood this and were simply respecting the architects wishes (perhaps not the cleaners wishes though...or the guides...).

On a final note Jeanette and I are also making great headway in making ourselves well-known at the expo site. We have become "this months customers" at Starbucks. Sad.
That's it for tonight folks!
Trine:D

A little quickie!

Dear readers, it has been a few days since my last confession, and in that time many a sin has been committed. Not by me though, but rather the many crazy visitors. However, I will keep these stories to myself just a little longer so you will have to wait in suspense!

The other day I was reading the description of our blog as it was intended, and realized that we have yet to blog and review one single pavilion. By now we have been through a huge chunk of the world, and we have so many opinions gathered by the two T's, but also opinions gathered by the many visitors, guides and organizers we meet on a daily basis. So in the spirit of doing what we promised we would do, Tori and I have decided that we need to blog about a few of the pavilions in the upcoming weeks. Along with this we will post the guide of the week for the past week, so if anyone has any suggestions, please send them my way! I will try to post this tomorrow If I can find an appropriate picture and manage to interview the lucky host or hostNess.

At this point in time I will give you a little teaser of what we have been going through in the past few days, key words being: China's biggest movie star popped by, creative Chinese in the stamping line (rules are there to be overcome...), a pregnancy and some unexpected attention at Starbucks for two of the Norwegian guides.
Peace out,
T -R- I-N-E

A Dinner Revealed

Team Leader and chocolate lover Øystein and Pavilion casanova Lars

Yesterday and the day before the guides were so lucky to be invited to dinner at the jovial General Commissioners penthouse apartment to recharge our batteries and of course celebrate the ever so slightly jingoistic annual Norwegian constitutional day. This day entails eating, drinking, eating, parading, eating, Norwegian flags, eating, drinking and singing. After a couple of glasses of wine, a few pizzas, some tempura shrimp, and then a couple more glasses of wine, people were ready to talk. For the first time since we began work we sat down together and talked about all the funny and strange stories that have emerged recently.

Lars, one half of the Norwegian super-couple looks like he should be in a Norwegian WWII film. He is tall, blond, blue eyed and melts all the little Chinese chickies hearts. Recently he was taking care of some VIPs that decided to grace us with their presence and he was briefed that the diva visiting was a supermodel fra LA - pretty impressive! Or so he thought. Waiting for the visitors he stopped an average looking Chinese woman trying to enter the pavilion, but realized just before it was too late that this in fact was the "super model". She eyed him up and down, and seemed to be pleased with the guide she had been presented. The "Supermodel" spent a looooong time in our lovely, but perhaps not so large pavilion - a suspiciously long time... As she left she asked for Lars' business card and presented her very own card entitled "Jane Doe - International Supermodel" embossed with a cute picture of herself crowned with a very nice princess tiara (as we all know, ALL international supermodels wear tiaras...or do they?). As she left she moved in alarmingly close to Lars and whispered with sex in her voice "we'll stay in touch"..... Watch out Bing is all I have to say!

Everyday we are put through our paces and asked questions about Norway only a rocket scientist (or perhaps pavilion smartie-pants Lars) could answer or mind-numbingly stupid questions a seal could answer by flipping its flippers. A few of these include (forgive me if I mentioned any of these before): "is your hair blond", "is there a real polar bear here", "Iceland is the caiptal of Norway, right?" (this one is particularly interesting as the Icelandic pavilion is our neighbouring pavilion), "Is the water in the water machine all from Norway", "Are you Norwegain?" (no I am italian...cuz that makes sense ya dufus!), Asked to one of the blondies:"Where in China are you from?", "Do you ONLY speak Mandarin?"(I am sorry I don't speak your particular branch of obscure dialect wich is incomprehensible to anyone besides your 2,000,000 person-village), "exactly how long is the Norwegain coastline?", "What is the scientific cause for the Northern lights, please answer in Chinese". Oh the questions! They do make life fun though!
Hipp hipp Hurra for dagen som var,
Trine:)

A Test of Patience

This weekend we welcomed over 300,000 people at the Expo-site that stretches from one side of the river to the other. We were busy. Very busy.

When I said "yes please" to this job, I did not realize that I was saying "yes please" to an advanced degree in patience-building. I have never considered myself very a very patient person in my private life (friends, family do you perhaps agree?), but having served diligently in the service industry for many years now, I have always considered myself balanced and patient when dealing with difficult or challenging situations. I just haven't realized that the situations that have been handed to be by a butler on a silver platter whilst sitting in a massage chair in my previous jobs have just been breezy summer days in comparison to the untimely black clouded hail storms that are hurled at us poor guides on a daily basis here in China. Yesterday the pavilion was stormed after the visitors decided to tear down our queuing system (we punished them like naughty children by not letting anyone in until they had calmed down and learned their lesson... it felt good...), several people had to be man handled out of the pavilion after refusing to leave because they wanted more stamps (am currently cursing whoever had the not-so-thought-through-idea of the problematic passport), and we spent almost the whole day telling people that "you have to stand in line", "no you are not allowed to sneak in", and "no you may not go into the area that says no entrance"... I say no more.

On a happier note. Hmmm... I really enjoyed the music in the pavilion today. Secret Garden. Again. For the umpteenth time. Very nice.

So I guess what I want to say with this very negatively-charged post is that it is not always easy to work at the Expo, but I am so impressed with my colleagues that come to work every day, even after they have faced many difficult situations, with a big smile and a wonderful attitude. They lift me up, and I am sure they lift the pavilion up to new heights. If you ever see a Norwegian Pavilion guide - give them a pat on the back. They really deserve it!
Signing off now to get some well-deserved sleep,
Trine/Truls/T-bag

Finally revealed: Guides of the past 2 weeks!!

Tori and Trine! (omg it´s us!! So surprised and truly honoured!!)

(just kidding..)

With help and suggestions from many fellow guides, we have decided who the guides of the week(s) are. Two weeks have passed already, and everyone has done an amazing job, in the words of our dear boss Øystein. But we feel that the following people have really STOOD OUT:

Drumroll....!!!

Lars Devold

Dixie Zhang

Tine Venås

Fredrik Karlsen

Will write more about them later, just figured everyone in the group was anxious to know! The illustration picture here does not really go with this post, but since I didn´t have pictures of all the honourable above mentioned people, I thought I would post this lovely picture of the two Ts comparing the size of their hands with the footprint of a polar bear(one of the most popular attractions in the Norway Pavilion)("You can touch it, it´s icy!").

Good night!

Everyone who was at work today must be pretty exhausted, as the stamp situation really escalated to new heights. Visitors have started to use manipulative and aggressive methods in order to get the previously mentioned Expo passport stamps. Today people attempted to make a run for the stamp desk through the exit, tried to bribe guards and guides to get stamps, snuck in through the restaurant pretending to have a meal and then run for the stamp desk! And of course, still handing out to- and collecting passports from other visitors, in order to avoid the "3 stamps per person" rule. To think that at the last expo in Europe, these passports were merely a fun little activity for kids!

ToRi

The "rumor mill" #2

So as Expo finally gets up and going rumours continue to swirl around the pavilions. Working as a guide at the pavilion is a little bit like spending your summer holidays at a camp with lots of other international kids, and so some of the rumours are accordingly. So as not to bore you too much, I will keep the bullet points short but sweet, but I will mention them in order to give you an insight as to how we spend our days... apparently...
Rumour Number:
1) Pretty much all the Norwegian girls are dating the Danish boys.... Good for us I guess, as they are quite a handsome bunch of guys... Just a shame we are unsure of who exactly is dating whom...
2) Kevin (a Norwegian guide) has at least one girlfriend in building nr three (OK, so we know Esten put out this rumour, but lets just pretend he didn't)..
3) There has been two broken limbs at the Danish pavilion as the Chinese are not used to back-breaks on bicycles (they are now installing hand breaks)...
4) We have our very own resident famous couple Bing and Lars who are being thrown around in the Chinese media because of their intercultural love.. sigh... (reminder to self: am always happy when others are happy...)
5) Five people have quit at the Columbian pavilion, and they want the Norwegians to cheer them up (maybe we should bring a bottle of aquavit and start the cheering up?)...
6) A woman lost control of her bicycle and ended up in the water at the Danish pavilion...HAHAHA! (OK,OK I know that is mean of me, but can you imagine????)
7) Fellow blogger Tori gave out too many business cards and has been called up by many, many Chinese men declaring their undying love for her and telling her in wonderfully romantic chinglish that "it has been missing her long time"...What exactly is "it"?
I hope you enjoyed some of the rumours, I will hunt for more in the upcoming week.
Trine:)

Where can I get a stamp?

On the Opening Day of the Expo, one of the first questions I got was from a woman waving a passport in my face, asking me where she could get a Norwegian visa stamp. Confused, I replied that she would need to go to the Norwegian Consulate´s Office on the Bund in order to do this, and explained to her that this was not a process that was done in an instant. The woman just starred quizzically back at me, and pointed to the front of the passport. Ah, it was not a regular passport, but a special EXPO version, that looks mistakenly similar to a real one. And sure enough, when I went to ask my colleagues about it, they were already setting up a desk by the exit, with ink and stamps showing the Norway Expo logo.

I immediately loved the idea of these passports. Many Chinese never have the chance to travel out of the country, and so Expo is a really unique oppurtunity for them to see the world. The passports assist in making this feel like a true travel experience. And besides, it is no secret to myself or anyone else who has been to China or even just a Chinese embassy at least once: The Chinese LOVE stamps. No document is complete without at least one blotch of ink at the end, preferably many, and with different colours.

So no surprise: These passports have become a real hit. From what I hear, they are the biggest source of income at the Expo after the actual entrance tickets. So the stamp desk at our pavilion is constantly employed by at least two of us hosts, doing our best to stamp to the visitors´requests ("No, I wanted a blue one!!" "It should be exactly in line with the page number here, but not too close" "I also need your autograph and a message in Norwegian underneath the stamp, and could I maybe have the stamp in two colours, and could you also stamp one on my arm and on my hat and shirt, and in this book which is a present to my friend?").

As the days have progressed, we noticed that more and more people were coming with many passports, mostly around five or seven, and most recently (yesterday): a bag of over 100! Many of these people come late at night, and are security guards or cleaning personnel that have special access to the Expo. Yes, they are making business out of this, and there are rumours that a passport with stamps from all the pavillions sell for around 6000 RMB! I don´t know if I really believe the figure is that high, but for sure people are making a lot of money from this. So as of yesterday, we made a new rule: "Only three passport stamps per person". This caused some seriously angry reactions, and we saw several instances of people handing out passports to other random visitors in the pavilion so they could have them stamped for them, and then collecting them again once outside.

Still: the passports are mostly just fun!! Yesterday I got my very own expo passport! I am so excited to use it. I haven´t planned on buying any more to sell, but now I know of a potential extra source of income, should my salary run out:D

Gotta run to work!

Tori, aka T-bag aka Torkel

Tales of the unexpected

Once upon a time there were a bunch of Norwegians who decided to move to China for the soul purpose of promoting their very own mystical land of fish, fjords, coast and arctic. They expected to be met by curious and awe-stricken eyes, questions concerning the cold and dark and fascination about polar bears, blond hair and white skin. For the most part their expectations were met, however on their little journey out to the far East they soon realized there were certain situations they were a little less than prepared for.

Jeanette (to some of us known as Jean-Luc) is one of the many gorgeous guides working in our little sail-covered forest. She spends day in and day out smiling, taking pictures and welcoming our most valued guests. The other day she was standing in the smokey mist at the entrance part of the queue doing her thing - smiling, nodding, "huanying nin", "ni hao", "yes you may take a picture", smile, nod, welcome etc etc etc.... As guest nr 3,856 entered the pavilion Jeanette once again prepared her welcome speech but was suddenly stopped as a somewhat overly-enthusiastic little (20yrs old perhaps) Chinese girl stopped and pointed at her face. As she fervently pointed at Jeanette's figure she jumped wildly up and down and at the same time spinning in place and shouting at the top of her voice "PIAOLIANG PIAOLIANG PIAOLIANG!!" ("beautiful"). As this was not a situation we had been briefed on in our very thorough cultural communication session, she politely smiled and ushered her new-found groupie through the mist and into the coast where she could sail on through the pavilion.

The very same day Jeanette also had an incident as she guided some of our VIPs through the "secret" tunnel to the beginning of the pavilion. Half way through the corridor she was stopped by what can only be described as a very unexpected sight: a Chinese lady in her underwear. Turns out the apperally-challenged woman was sick of wearing her lovely pink cocktail dress and had decided that a skirt and a top was much more suitable for her day out at the expo (go figure....DUH!). Jeanette was faced with the challenge of how to culturally appropriately ask the lady to please put her clothes on and get the hell out of there. Three words were used (as Jeanette is not completely fluent in chinese....yet...), "xi shou jian???" (bathroom???).

Before the opening date we had many sessions brainstorming potential questions. We must admit though that some of the questions we are faced with on a daily basis makes those sessions look like we might have been served better had we just had coffee and talked about "Sex in the City".. My favourite questions include "why is your hair not yellow?", "is there snow in Norway?", "How much does a polar bear weigh?", "is there a real polar bear in the pavilion?" (whereby Kristina replied, "yes, but it only comes out at night"), and "how can the Norwegian economy be so strong when you hardly ever work?". It is always a challenge not laughing when answering these questions, but then again, Norway is pretty far away, so I suppose they are all valid questions.

That's it for tonight folks! Behave, don't do anything I wouldn't do, and watch out for hungry polar bears!

Trine:)

Guides of the week (last week)

Good afternoon blog-readers!

Last week we named two people from our group, Esten and Forrest, Guide of the Week. Here comes a delayed post dedicated to them. From now on we plan to have a weekly post announcing the guide(s) of the week, including a video or written statement from them. We have thought about putting a suggestion box in the lunch room, so that fellow guides/staff can give us tips on guides that they feel have stood out, as well as advice or other input to this blog. What do you think about that?

Anyway, here is introducing the guides!

FORREST KONG

This guide of the week has been a true inspiration to his peers. Born, raised and working as a school teacher in Ningxia, Western China, he is not the average guide in our group. During our training period, Forrest held a moving powerpoint presentation to all of us, showing how he by chance got to know some Norwegians through his school in Ningxia, and thereby has contributed a lot of time and energy to his friendships and Sino-Norwegian relations. Forrest´s unique dedication to Norway and Norwegians has really enhanced everyones motivation to be proud of- and promote Norway to our visitors. Forrest is also a really hard-working guy, who happily shows up to work voluntarily on his days off(!!). In short, his overall enthusiasm is a true source of inspiration for all of us.

ESTEN ALEKSANDER EDNA

This guy is full of energy, and always has a big smile on his face. His signature yell "Juhuu yes azz" is a popular "energizer" among us guides. We feel that his bright spirit is immensely contagious and really contributes to the atmosphere of the group.

He is also an excellent hugger, he has even managed to make most of the Chinese guides addicted to his hugs (Generally speaking, Chinese are not as accustomed to close body contact as us Norwegians). And if that wasn´t enough, we have recently discovered that he is also an amazing cook! This guy, together with assistant Dixie, spent his whole day off work cooking dinner and baking, and invited all the guides over to his apartment for a soirée of excellent food and a showing of ultimate romantic chick-flick "The Notebook"! This happened after last week´s "Guide of the Week" prize, so we can´t say that he is totally out of the running this week either. Most of the girls have recently attempted to propose to him, but with little luck:/

Esten´s statement:

First of all I want to say it's a great honour for me to receive this price and I'm very happy about it. I feel that we the guides, are are a very interesting gang with a wide variety of backgrounds, culture and unique skills. It's as we're turning into this big family in which everyone are looking out for each other and where words as commitment, positivity and caring set out as core values. When I look at our team, all I see is inspired friends ready to do their best for Norway. So I know that anyone of us can be the guide of the week.

My hope for the Expo is that we will cooperate and find a common team spirit, which will turn out to be the STRONGEST of all the pavillions at the Expo. A spirit that each and everyone of us constantly are willing to fight for. My belief is that you can build the biggest, most advanced, most innovative or the most outstanding pavillion. But again that is only a building. What people will remember, is in what way the pavillion is presented to them, and the people they interact with in doing so. In that simple way I think we can obtain the biggest success of all, the success of human relations. When expo is over, That is what I really think people will remember. The success is easily within our reach. It's just up to all of us. Thank you!!!

Juhuu! Yes Azz!

That´s it for today! I will try to post some of my first expo experiences soon, am currently enjoying a few days away from the limelight.

On behalf of the two Ts,

Tori

Personal reflections

Kristina in the "Mist. Powered by Daniel"
Where there is a stage there's a way!
Trine. Powered by the Anorak.
Expo-girlies with our bad ass guard!


Greetings good people!
My high school career was enjoyed at a multicultural international school in Europe's capital, Brussels (or more precisely right smack bang in the middle of Napoleon's battlefields in Waterloo). Every year we would have what we called "International Day" which gave each country the opportunity to present their country in their very own biased and very subjective way. Brasil would dance like no others and bribe the public with their amazing food and infectiously good tempers, Pakistan would fatten us up with their deliciously crunchy and spicy samosas, Belgium would seduce us with chocolate and finish us off with irresponsible amounts of mouth-watering beer and Norway would parade around in their folk dress, make waffles and try to pull of a dance show (with worse and worse result as the years passed because of the infamous "norwegian stiffness", meaning that Norwegian and dance is like Indians and skiing - not a great success).

As I walked to the bus yesterday I had a sudden bout of deja vu. As people trickled onto the bus, I realized that my new place of work is like working at a very, very long "International Day". The bus was filled up with people in traditional Saudi Arabian robes, white as the new fallen snow, voluptuous African women draped in colors as vibrant as a peacock's feathers, Danes looking cool with their bohemian attitude, white skin and blond hair, Chinese looking...well, Chinese and last but not least the East European gang looking like they were on their way to a, "hey-you!-the-bad-taste-party-from-the-eighties-called-and-wants-their-clothes-back!"-party... (and I say that in the kindest possible way as I am sure they would not chose to wear those uniforms if they had a choice...). Our little gang of tomatoes also add some spice to this concoction of randomly placed people as I have to admit our uniforms makes us stand out just a teency weency bit.. It is quite amazing to be in a place like Expo and have the opportunity to learn so much about different countries, and experience so much culture each day. As the days pass by I really understand the importance of this event, and I really hope that people who come to see this event can fully appreciate the uniqueness of it.

I can also report that there are several first reports of slight cultural mis-communication all over Expo. Some of the main problems seem to be food delivery, problems in customs and general communication between Chinese staff and non-Chinese staff due to the lack of language skills either way. People seem to be handling it quite well non the less, and I am quite amazed that everyone (at least on the surface) has the happy-go-lucky-attitude that this is just how it is, and things will be fine in the end (even if simple tasks take four hours instead of 5mins...). I must admit that I reached a point today where my patience cup was filled to the brim and unfortunately flowed over the edge for just a moment until I was able to control my temper and plaster a fake smile and count to 10. A woman snuck into the pavilion, made a scene when I politely asked her to stand in line and then proceeded to force me into a picture with her while she tried to force my head onto her shoulder so that I would look upon her lovingly. That did not happen... As I calmly asked her not to touch my head and wished her a lovely trip through our pavilion I counted to 10, had a sip of water and reminded myself that situations like this is what I am here to handle. I felt like the most zen and perfectly balanced person for handling the situation in this manner. Props to Tiny-T! (Expo-gang, if you have any similar stories feel free to share them, I am sure all of us will have at least one funny story in the next short while). Having told you this one story, I would also like to inform you that most people are very lovely, curious and fun to interact with, and that the crazy-head lady is by no means representative of the visitors.

Tomorrow is a new day with new opportunities, so I should rest up before I face a new day at EXPO 2010!

Nimen hao!
Saturday was my first day at an open Expo. In the days previous to the opening we had heard rumours that everything from 350,000 to 3,000,000 people were expected on May 1st, so as you might expect we were all a little curious/nervous/excited when the day arrived. I was expecting the worst, and especially since I had been designated the queuing area which is the area where there was expected the most problems. Unfortunately for readers expecting a juicy story concerning chaos, fighting and crazed Chinese, I must disappoint you as the whole day went pretty smoothly. Having said that, I must add that it was hard work, and the only way to really control the queuingly-challenged visitors was to entertain them. So for about eight hours I was doing everything from singing, pretending to do gongfu, dancing, making stupid signals to my colleagues, and lastly and possibly most importantly SMILING. Smile, hello, smile, welcome, smile, how are you?, smile, please be careful and do not run over Linn Marie, smile please take care of the queing area, smile, I'm sorry I only speak mandarin and not your specific dialect, yes yes, I know it is terrible that I don't speak your specific dialect, I am truly embarrassed and will definitely consider moving to your province in order to master yet another impossible language, smile, yes you may have my autograph (???), smile hello and welcome. And this for the next six months. Hmmmm...

In my area I was able to ask the visitors what they thought of expo and the answers were generally something along the lines of, "wonderful, but hot", "very nice, but too many people", "terrible, I have been standing in line all day", "the most wonderful experience ever, I want to cry", "huh? I don't understand your chinese", "Maybe very nice". When answering what their favourite pavilion was it was more problematic. I din't get one straight answer, however, I did get the feeling that the Australian pavilion was pretty cool. They had no problem letting me know that the french and italian pavilion were terrible though (I don't believe this, I just think they were annoyed at standing in line for three hours). The Chinese pavilion was so popular that they informed the public on the news at 11am that there was really no point in trying to stand in line and that people should come back another time.

On a different topic, we finally got our costumes...uhhh I mean uniforms the other day. They are very Norwegian as they are inspired by the mountain anorak, and very red which means luck and all other wonderful things in Chinese symbolism. Øystein, our team leader, has dubbed us "his little tomatoes". Thanks Øystein.. I should also add that when the uniforms arrived there were several of the girls (the two T's included) who developed instantaneous eating disorders as the sized were of an alternative nature. People who use size 36 usually had to go up a couple of sizes because I think someone, somewhere forgot that people have hips. Or at least Norwegian people.... Oh well. The uniforms are a lot better than initially feared, and the guys look pretty smokin' hot in theirs. They are quite the attraction for all the Chinese girlies:)

I'll keep you posted as the week progresses, but for today I will enjoy some time away from expo as I have a day off. What to do, what to do? Some breakfast perhaps?
In the words of Esten, "wohooooo, yesss azzz"
Trine:)

Expo opens with a fire crack!

Good evening to all!
Tonight marks the opening of Expo 2010 in Shanghai. This enormous $45billion-event was opened in style with the big-boss himself, Hu Jintao and the French pres Sarcozy gracing China with his presence as well as Republic of Korea President Lee Myung-bak(along with 17 other world leaders). As we were hostNessing (got business cards today with the chinglish title of "hostNess"....sigh...) at the Norwegian pavilion we were only able to see the grandiose display of fireworks and not the entire show. I do have a feeling it was quite spectacular though, and I am excited about seeing it in a couple of days. As it is getting late now I will let this post be short and sweet. As I'll be quite busy with the opening day tomorrow (rumors say that there will be three million visitors tomorrow....) a more comprehensive post will arrive in a couple of days.
Night night
Trine