Paparazzi

So a funny thing happened to me yesterday in the park. I was walking around, camera on one shoulder, purse on the other, checking out shops and people watching. I decided to go up to the 7-Eleven (yep they have those here) to get an ice cream. You know, the kind with vanilla on the inside and hard chocolate on the outside, frozen on a stick.
I wandered into the park again with my ice cream. I passed an older Chinese man setting up some photography equipment.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello," he said.

I got a few steps past him when he said, "Hey! Come here!" I turned around to look at him, and he gestured to me and said, "I want to take you pict-ya!"

Now, this was not new. I've had my picture taken a lot since arriving in China. If you ever want to feel like a movie star, just go to China. People constantly stare at you. People snap pictures of you from a distance, up close, and even come up and put an arm around your shoulders and hold up two fingers in the peace sign for the pictures.

So I continued to eat my ice cream on a stick and walked over to the spot that the man was gesturing for me to stand.

I looked down at my flip-flops and my red dress. I briefly thought about my messy hair tied up in a bun. Hmm. Whatever.

I looked up.

Twenty some-odd Chinese men with cameras had gathered in front of me, flashes bursting over and over, the tell-tale sound of lenses snapping open and closed in a flurry of photography.

I stood there, dumbly grinning, holding my melting ice cream.

"Okay," the man said. "Okay, thank you." I stepped down and walked away, wondering what had just happened.

Uh. Yeah. So if you see me on the internet...I blame the Paparazzi.