Kunshan Trip - Day 2

Today started off like yesterday. Wake up early, have breakfast, then go to training. There were more hands on training this time around, and I still learned quite a few things. There were also some special guests from other suppliers over to "teach" us, and by that, I mean, "give us their sales pitch". One of them was someone I liked to call "Blinky McBlinker", cuz he couldn't for the life of him stop blinking! Every word he said, he would blink at least once. Sometimes, he would do a quadruple blink, 4 blinks in quick succession. Sometimes, he would do the slow-mo blink, which is like one of those blinks women do in the movies to flirt with guys. Sometimes, he would do the closed-eye blink, where he blinks, and while his eyes are closed, blinks again. Don't ask me how that's possible. But each type of blink was never more than a second away from the next blink. I wanted to gouge my eyes out! Everytime _I_ blinked, I would get really conscious of it, especially watching him do it. I'd think that I'm blinking like him. It's very irritating! Anyway, aside from that little annoyance, the rest of the training went well. Around 6pm, they took us to dinner at a fancy chinese restaurant, where the food was way better than last night's, but not quite as good as the typical chinese food I'm used to. Their way of cooking is different. There were some good foods though, so it was a satisfactory meal. After the meal, as they promised, they took us to the foot massage place. It was about 10 minutes walk in the cold, but it was nice and refreshing, and good after a hearty meal. When we got there, there were a lot of people waiting, and we had to wait half an hour to get served. It was only 3 in a room, so Paul and I and a Thailand guy were in the room together. Once we were in, they gave us tea and oranges, and had us relax in almost, but not-quite Lazy boys. We waited a while for them to show up and start massaging our feet. One thing I noticed when we got there was that they had the opposite sex serve people. So if you were a guy, they got a girl to serve you, and vice versa. Unfortunately, they gave me a guy. I hope they weren't implying anything. They asked me if it was ok, and I said yes. The other two guys got girls. Anyway, it was almost half an hour after we were in the room before they started. First, they had us put our feet inside these buckets of really hot tea. They were so hot, that when we took our feet off, they were red. They had massaged our backs while our feet were doused. After they took out our red feet, they started shaving off the hard skin, and then massaged our feet and calves for a good 45 minutes. After that, they put lots and lots of ginger on top of our legs and covered them with hot towels. They kept them there for around 15 minutes. Let me tell you they were scalding hot, and I just wanted to reach out and rip them off. But I didn't. They said it was supposed to make your body cooler or something. Something about yin and yang, how chinese believe some foods like ginger raise your body's yin, or is it yang. Anyway, it's supposed to be hugely popular, and this was the only place that did it. So we suffered through it. It wasn't bad, though. After they took them out, it felt so good, but my legs were hot for the entire walk home in the cold. All throughout the massage, they kept trying to talk to us, but they only spoke mandarin, and no english. And Paul and the Thailandese didn't know much mandarin. I tried my best, and at least got to talk to them a bit. Good practice, I guess. Anyway, it was an interesting experience.

Pics can be seen over here. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion, which may not be posted until the day after tomorrow.