Shanghai

I can hear the barge blare its loud obnoxious bull horn as it coasts through the Huangpu river. My apartment overlooks the Huangpu jiang or Huangpu river, which splits the city (muncipality) of Shanghai into two sections, Pudong (浦东 East of the Huangpu) which is the newly developed area (once farm land, and poor) and 浦西 Puxi (West of the Huangpu) the old area of Shanghai.

Currently my apartment at the Expo village is located on the Pudong side. There are about 13 or so expo village apartments, which is supposed to house 10,000 residents who are participating in the Expo 2010: Shanghai, but in the past two days it seems that we are in a ghost town. There are a variety of shops, restaurants and what not to appease the expected 10,000 visitors, but we only see barely anyone as we wander around. It seems like it's just us USAP members.

My role among the 160+ (I think) who are here are known as US Student Ambassadors who work at the USAP (US Pavilion). We've had intense training sessions for the past 4 days with our USAP directors and leaders who have shoved an enormous amount of insight, advice, and information into our heads. The headache I have had is painful, but from this I have gained a better perspective and turned over a new leaf with my attitude towards the USA Pavilion.

My previous experience was in May when my friends and I (studying abroad in Beijing) traveled down to Shanghai to enjoy Labor Day Weekend (in communist countries, labor day falls in the first weekend of May). Expo 2010 just began that very weekend and tickets were sold out for the first two days. Luckily we got a hold of tickets for the last day we were in Shanghai.
We avoided the queue (lines), ducked into any pavilion that had a short wait or no wait at all. The US pavilion had one of the longest lines when we showed up, so we avoided heading in there. By fate and my good eye for spotting an American a mile away (or a USAP student ambassador), we got into the Pavilion.