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:)