So this last weekend, I went to a place called Window of the World with my neighbour Dan.  Window of the World is something like an amusement park, with the theme being wonders of the world.  It has scale models ranging from a four story version of the eiffel tower to a 4 foot capital building.  They also have a few rides, and an indian shooting rane with the chinese who work there dressed in warpaint, feathers, and other indian regalia of the type that I would have worn when I was little for halloween.  I had been very curious about the place since I heard about it when i first got here.  I asked my contact teacher about it and she said that there are several palces such as this around China.  The reason being of course that most chinese do not have the chance to leave the country to see the actual versions of what they can see at Window of the World.  
Now I don't want to nay say or anything of the like but it didn't really sit right with me.  I have sen several of the actual things that they had replicas of at Window of the World.  BUT, there are still several that i have not seen, including several replcias from southeast asia that I hope to see soon, and several from Europe that I want to see, an example is the Colliseum.  The replica they had of that came up to about my waist.  To me you can't use a replica for these types of things.  A HUGE part of the awe and reason that people find these sights so amazing is because of the sheer scale of these monuments that people have achieved, especially considering that most of them were made long before modern technology came along.  It just seems that if you only look at the pyramids, the Colliseum, the Easter island statues, Machu Pichu, etc as something that you oly need to see to say that you have seen them then you are missing the point.  you can do that from the interent, just look at the pictures.  But if you want to actually SEE them then it shouldn't just be to say I kow waht they look like, it should be because you carea bout what they are and how they were made and the history behind them.  I mean these arent just buildings, these are monuments to human achievement.  Anyways, next time I'm just going across the street to Happy Valley, which is just a simple amusement park.