Traveling the World

You take the wine out and begin pouring it into the cups. It tastes great entering your mouth and going down your throat, but as the taste begins to fade, you look into the sky and fear the worst: rain. Even worse, you didn’t bring an umbrella and your hotel is on the other side of town! As the drizzle becomes a full-blown storm with lightning and thunder, you huddle with several other people underneath a vendor’s humongous umbrella.

You bide your time in boredom and angst, waiting for the rain to stop. A genius of a man approaches those of us who’ve become trapped like prey, and offers to sell us umbrellas for 10rmb. You are surprised by how fair he is being, as he obviously has the upper hand and could easily sell them for twice the price and you would pay it just to free yourself from the hell you’re enduring. You open the umbrella, grab your best gal’s arm, and run as fast as you can across the river and through the town, trying hard not to slip on the flooded cobblestone streets. After a rough time, you collapse on your bed, soaked to the bone. It’s something you realize you’ll never forget.

My friend Simon took this photo using his Canon Digital SLR while we were in the Old Town area of Shanghai. As you can see, it was raining that day, and the rain was a beautiful touch in the foreground. The beautiful architecture surrounding her makes for another piece of brilliant foreground material. Despite all this, the mood the woman displayed was the greatest part of the photo, and something you couldn’t do better yourself with the help of Photoshop!

I have no idea what this woman was thinking, but she looks like she was staring off into the distance, as if she were awaiting someone’s arrival. The sadness in her eyes is so deep one must stop and think, “how can someone be so sad?” Her folded hands makes her look stubborn like she’s the trunk of a tree, and she’s not going anywhere. My only hope is that she got what she was waiting for.