So I’m back in Beijing safe and sound (平平安安!), and I’ve got a lot of new stories to tell from the trip — they’ll be up on the blog shortly — but first I thought I’d just publish a collection of some of the coolest pavilions that I saw at the Shanghai 2010 world expo. I went three times, so all three days will be mixed together. It won’t be hard to tell which is which, though: day 2 was rainy, day 3 was a late-night visit, and day 5 is everything else.
I apologize in advance to my benevolent webmaster, Mr. Geoffrey Hill, for any data charges he incurs for this post being rather memory-intensive. I promise I will pay you moneys, please to be not breaking my kneecaps.

Without further adieu, the 上海世博 ：城市，让生活更美好。

Might as well start with the China pavilion. Only 50,000 tickets to it are sold each day, and they sell out usually within an hour of the booth opening at 8. Since we never came earlier than 1pm, we couldn't even get close to this one.

The United Arab Emirates Pavillion.

This one was modeled after sand dunes. Look at it from farther back.

The UK pavilion was just a big lighted koosh ball. Unfortunately it wasn't on right now, and when I came back at night it was already off. Sad times.

Madagascar and most of the rest of Africa was pretty disappointing... but the lines were super short to see them, so we went to most of the continent.

Mike and Connor (right). He just had to have the leopard print...

the land down under wasn't particularly creative. beats the US though

Dont actually know which one this was, but it's pretty

The Kazakhstan pavillion appeared to be covered in bacon. Pretty rad.

Japan had a bizarre, pink, entirely-sellf-sufficient bubble filled with robots.

Connor in front of north Korea AND Iran in the axis-of-evil section of the grounds

Connor inside North Korea.

South Korea was pretty cool. Had a big acoustic drum show inside the day we went

One of the only almost-entirely-outdoor pavilions. A lot of fun to run around in at night

Germany's was cool but kinda bleak. They had a dance party under it after hours, though.

Mother, er, poccnr? I think I can see this pavilion from my backyard.

The giant face was a lil' creepy, but oh well

India. We really, really tried to get into this one. Unfortunately, like seventy-five thousand Chinese people had the same idea. Bah.

That should be about everything! I have a couple more expo pictures but I can mix those into the next couple blogs.