China Day 9

The 430 am wake up call didn't make friends out of anyone, but most of us were able to sleep on the plane to Shanghai. We were also annoyed because not only were we told we'd be getting breakfast, but we'd been told we were getting 2. The tour company was supposed to have given us a to go breakfast in a box (which Chris swears he saw rolled out for us but we never received) but also we were supposed to get breakfast on the plane. I don't think I could call that breakfast. It was apple chips, nasty looking peas and carrots, a cold dry bread thing with 6 chocolate chips on top, and a sesame muffin. Of course we ate it anyway, but we refused to enjoy it.
When I fell asleep people were complaining to Shifu about the herb pharmacy fiasco the other day, and when I woke up an hour or so later, they were still talking about it. No one is enjoying the commercial tour that we're on right now because it's like a living infomercial where they don't allow you to turn the channel or shut off the tv. It's ridiculous.
Shifu made things a bit more interesting on the bus ride today though. We left the Shanghai airport and headed to Wuxi. We thought we'd be seeing something interesting, but instead it nothing other than more setup situations to get us to spend money. This time it was teapots.
Quite an argument ensued between the whole group and the tour girls. The local Wuxi girl left the bus very sad that we we're more interested in actually learning and seeing China and it's culture than blindly throwing money at people like we had bottomless pockets. It actually seemed to me like it was taken as a personal insult that she didn't do a good enough job selling it. Hopefully it's not because of anything like she can't pay rent this month. They other girl fought hard that she couldn't do anything for us and that it was because of the parent company in the US that she HAD to take us shopping. It didn't have anything to do with connections between the tour company and the places we're taken to spend money.
Parts of the discussion/argument were pretty funny, others were just aggravating for many reasons. My personal favorite was when "Jessica" offered that we could go visit the buddhist temple in Suzhou and Chris wanted clarification that it was a real temple and not just something built to take in tourists and make them spend money like all the other places we've been taken over the last couple of days. She got pretty pissed, but it summed up how we've been feeling pretty well.
We all wanted to go to a cave that Shifu had mentioned that sounded pretty kickass. Apparently it's covered in minerals and there are crystals all over the place. Just what I need!! I've not been able to find a rock shop anywhere!
Instead we got taken to the not fake temple that was full of tourists. It was a beautiful place and it would have been nice to see it in the daylight for more than an hour, but I think the girl was cranky and couldn't just take us to the hotel. I'm sure she won't be doing us any favors.
Dinner was at the hotel and was fair (although the soup was good) and people were very excited to check out the pool. I was a good kid though and stayed out to keep from relapsing. All the sleep on the plane and in the bus today really has made me feel better. I'm sure the medicine from Master Wei has played a big part as well, and I'm very glad. As I"m writing this I don't have a headache for the first time in 3 days or something. YAY!!!