Sayonara Japan, Ni-Hao China

Well I'm out of Japan and back on mainland Asia where everything is cheap and the sewers are open. My last couple months in Japan flew by, not much happened. I travelled around a bit and mostly spent my time trying to figure out how to get rid of all my shit (sending stuff home is expensive and garbage disposal in Japan is stupidly strict). I dumped alot of it at one of my classrooms and at neighbouring buildings. Saying goodbye to all my kids was a little sad and a little awesome, depending on the kids. I gave little presents to the kids I liked and psychologically abused those I didn't one last time. Then I flew to China.
The first thing I noticed about China (after the constant fog of pollution and overbearing heat) was the fact that Chinese people are cartoonishly rude. Coming from Japan probably didnt help. If you left your first-born in a dumpster with a wad of bills in his mouth in Japan, the Japanese would wash him, feed him, buy him clothes, return him to your door with the money and probably apologize to you for not washing him thoroughly enough. Chinese people would eat him and then spit on you. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration, but my point is the same. My impression at first was that Chinese people weren't very good at English but it's not that, they just don't use most of the common English phrases like 'Excuse me', 'Sorry', 'Thank you', 'Welcome', and 'Watch out, I'm about to spit on your foot'.
China does, however, have some amazing things to see. I flew into Shanghai and had a couple days there. Really cool city, especially the ultra-modern, ultra-Phallic architecture. I also made tons of Chinese friends. They all seemed to be students and all seemed really nice and all seemed to have an art gallery or tea house or interesting antique store that I should see. They never wanted to talk about anything I wanted to talk about though. Our conversation:

Random Chinese Person: Hello!
Bouche: Hello
RCP: Where are you from?
B: Canada
RCP: Ah! Toronto or Ottawa?
B: I have to choose huh? I'd say Ottawa. But a little closer to Vancouver.
RCP: Vancouver is the 3rd largest city in Canada.
B: That's an odd thing for you to know.
RCP: You speak English very well.
B: Thank you, I studied it in high school.
RCP: Do you speak Chinese?
B: Not a word.
RCP: (Grins) Good. Where are you going?
B: The Shanghai museum.
RCP: Oh, I see. Maybe it's closed today.
B: Don't think so.
RCP: Well, do you like Chinese art?
B: Im pretty indifferent.
RCP: You should see our art gallery, it's very close.
B: Maybe, I've heard the museum's art gallery is nicer though.
RCP: Well, do you like Chinese tea?
B: I guess.
RCP: OK! Let's go to a tea house I know and become friends.
B: I thought we were already friends. Anyways, I have to go to the museum. Is it this way?
RCP: No, it's that way, and its closed I think, come to the tea house.
(I start speaking French)

They always sent me in the wrong direction too. I had talked to a few people who actually went along to these tea houses and got dinged for like $200 bills for tea. Anyways, after Shanghai I went to Yellow mountain, a really famous mountain in China. Did some amazing hiking there and then went off to Beijing.
Beijing is big and dirty but the Great Wall and Beijing's other sites are pretty impressive. The food is amazing too, despite it having previously unheard of amounts of grease on it. China has obviously welcomed foreign companies to exploit it more than the French welcome invading armies. In the Forbidden City, China's ancient city where all the emperors lived and held court, probably the most sacred place in China, there is a Starbucks. In all other famous sights, there is at least one Starbucks and a few McDonald's, Dairy Queen's. etc. In all though, it's a really interesting city.
What is less interesting about Beijing is the Mongolian embassy where I spent most of my time. For some reason, the guy who works there, knowing full well that his major weaknesses include accepting Visa applications and processing such applications, decided to work in the Visa section of an embassy. In one day, he honestly got through maybe 10 people. I managed to get in the embassy (most people had to wait outside) and I thought I was to be one of the chosen few to get my Visa. This, however, was thwarted by some dumb, ugly, stupidhead Russian woman who took 50 minutes of the previously mentioned Visa-phobic employee's time arguing about bortsch or perogies or something. I wanted to send her to a gulag. Really, if you are taking that much time in a line, you should either let people go ahead of you, or kill yourself. Anyways, I didn't get my Visa that day and it meant I could only spend 30 hours in Mongolia instead of 4 days.
So considering how many important sights there are in China and how big China is, nine days isn't close to being enough. If, however, you consider how hot China is and how angry I was after that Visa thing, nine days is about right. I finally made it to Mongolia which is a much cooler country. The capital city (and really the only city) was pretty nice and Mongolian people are really cool. Having only 30 hours there I didn't get to see much of the countryside but I did do a day trip and got some hiking in and stuff. I also went swimming in a river with some Mongolian orphans who spoke better English than my Japanese kids. After swimming for like 30 minutes, their douchebag British teacher was like, 'Oh, I hope you didn't go in the water, it's really polluted. It has shit and stuff in it.' Oh, thanks for the info, no I was just sunbathing here in my underwear with naked Mongolian orphans. Not to worry. I took a long shower after that.
So now I'm in Russia. Russia is very Russian. The people are fucking hilarious and I could sit around and take pictures of them all day. Even I have more fashion sense than these people. If you want to wear a Hawaiian shirt with plaid shorts, black socks and sandals, you'll fit right in. But I'll wrap this up.

Bouche