Thursday, July 5th

In the morning a group of us went to Thailand's National Day Ceremony since our Thai friends had invited us  specifically and we wanted to support them. They weren't the ones performing or anything but still. It was a really good performance, so I'm glad we went. The invitations also said national costume or formal dress only, so we all dressed up 
for the ceremony and were really amused with ourselves, although we were disappointed we had no national costume we could wear.

There was a concert with 2PM and Miss A starting at 8 pm, so Ellen and I went over at 3:30 pm to see how the crowds were. We decided coming later would be too risky because we wanted to make sure to have a good view, so we sat down and then Ellen went off for a half hour to do stuff and then came back and joined me. Then I left for an hour to go back to Expo Town to grab some stuff I needed. Then we just waited, while it sprinkled off and on. Everyone remained sitting, even though the audience section is all standing room simply because no one wanted to stand for hours while waiting. This all changed about an hour or half hour before the concert started. People started standing up behind us and Ellen warned me to be prepared for a sudden surge forward. We realized we had to stand up, unless we wanted people to charge in front of us, but probably the first sixty people remained seated on the ground. So there was this large crowd of people trying to surge forward while a group of people sitting were yelling at them to keep standing behind them. Then this middle-aged lady starting pulling on my arm and telling me I had to move forward. With all the people, I ended up making the bad decision to step over the people sitting and move into the empty area in front of them because I just wanted to get out of the crazy mob. Except I tripped and I think accidentally kneed a woman's shoulder as I face-planted into the ground. The lady started screaming furiously at me, claiming I had kicked her child in the face, but I am absolutely positive I didn't do that because I fell in order to avoid the child. But she was furious at me, and I just stood there and apologized. I didn't really know what to do. I had no interest in rushing to the very front because I hadn't crossed them for that. I simply wanted out of the psychotic mob, but by doing that, I had just made more trouble. Other people started pushing through though and finally one of the security team members (who I'm pretty sure were all teenage volunteers) told the people they had to stand up simply for their own safety since the mob was getting out of control. They stood up reluctantly and the mob just surged forward. From then on it was just a gigantic mob of people trying to push as forward as possible while everyone in front of them pushed back because people were getting too crowded. The worst was that there were a bunch of children who kept trying to shove their ways forward because they couldn't see, but they couldn't see no matter what since everyone else was taller than them, meaning they were constantly moving around everywhere without accomplishing anything.

 

After the concert, I changed clothes and headed to a party for our pavilion, which we held in the Denmark Pavilion's VIP lounge. Let me just say their catered food was absolutely delicious. They had open sandwiches, cookies, and the best of all, strawberry trifles. I ate more of those than I would like to admit.