Aww…we left the ship today. After breakfast, there really wasn’t anything to do around the ship except watch some demonstrations and pack your bags. The latter I completed before breakfast, so all I did was watch the chefs do some vegetable carvings, and exploring the ship. The parents however, spent the morning fulfilling a request by Michael. He wanted them to give him a copy of each of the certificates given by the Yichang Museum for each piece they bought. As an added thing, my mom told me to bring out my I-Zone camera so that they could take pictures of all the pieces to add on to the very non-descriptive certificates. However, the film in my I-Zone has already expired, so many of the pictures didn’t come out fully or were not positioned correctly. That meant that they wasted a lot of film.

Once we got to Wuhan, we ate our last meal on the ship (lunch) and left the ship and all of the friends we made aboard (like the people who also got cheated at the museum…these people also played Mahjong alot, and our waiter and waitress, Stam and Michelle).

After we checked into the hotel, my parents and I departed the group because two of my uncles and many relatives (that my mom has met only once) live in Wuhan. Therefore, as they went to the Huanghe pagoda, my uncle picked my family up from the hotel and took us to his bakery, which is located on a solely walking road filled with clothing stores (even the Pepsi store). All the stuff inside the bakery looked really good, plus the presentation was very nice. I ended up eating this bread roll thing and my uncle gave my mom a small cake and a box of red bean rolls to take back to our tour group.

On the second floor of the bakery, there’s a small restaurant as well. We chilled there for awhile, talking about stuff with my other uncle. Eventually my mom’s uncle came by and sat down, and my mom’s cousin came by as well with a bunch of shoes that my uncle wanted my mom to try. The ones that she liked, he gave to her. Afterwards, we stopped by the bookstore behind the store, bought some maps, and then went out onto the street to shop more. The main thing we were looking for was camcorder tapes, but we couldn’t find them.

At dinner time, we walked back to the bakery where we met a bunch of other people such as my mom’s cousin’s daughter, the daughter’s cousin, and my mom’s other cousin and her husband. We all walked maybe like 10 minutes to the restaurant and had dinner. It turns out that many of the relatives are working for my uncle, managing his company. Therefore, dinner really became a lecture about how things should be done rather than a family get-together. Eventually, we had to part. Hopefully I’ll be able to see them again…hopefully I’ll be able to come back one day in the future.

My two uncles came back to the hotel with us, where they continued to talk. We’re probably going to see them again tomorrow, but then again, we’ll definitely see them (I think) at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Well, not much to say today because there wasn’t any planned activity for us, but I still enjoyed the relaxation and meeting relatives.