POV: Mordecai
Not a whole lot happened after Rigby and I finally managed to get out of Volgograd. Rigby wasn't too interested in making many more stops before getting to the coast (which I frankly agreed with), so most of our time was spent driving east.
Now, considering we didn't have any way to tell which way was east, we pretty much had to wing it by following the signs on the freeway. To be honest, I kind of had the feeling we were going more southeast than east, but it got us out of Russia, which I was only too happy to get out of.
Anyway, despite spending a few weeks straight on the road with some nights at motels to break up the monotony, we finally managed to make it into China, and we were just about to get into Lhasa, the capital of Tibet when Rigby finally decided to speak up.
"Hey, let's stop here. I could really use a chance to stretch my legs."
I looked at him curiously through the rear-view mirror.
"Really? You seemed pretty hell bent on getting to the coast."
"Well, yeah. But there's a point when the constant driving just gets to you."
"Alright, fair enough. Keep an eye out for a hotel."
Rigby nodded before looking out the window, hoping to find a hotel soon.
Eventually, we did find one, and it was surprisingly in a decent place in town. As I parked the truck in a spot in the hotel's parking lot, a thought suddenly came to me.
"Hey Rigby, was Chinese one of the languages they taught you?"
Rigby looked at me, slightly confused.
"Yeah, I learned Mandarin. Why?"
"Just wanted to make sure."
Rigby gave me a weird look before heading into the hotel, with me following not far behind.
As we walked into the surprisingly spacious lobby of the hotel, Rigby walked up to one of the receptionists. He opened his mouth and was about to talk to him, when the receptionist suddenly interrupted.
"English?"
Rigby closed his mouth, slightly flustered.
"Yeah. How did you know?" I asked.
"I can tell by the way you look. We get a lot of tourists. Anyway, how can I help you?"
The receptionist still had a pretty thick Tibetan accent, but Rigby shrugged, happy that he at least didn't have to worry about carrying both of us for the moment.
"A room for the two of us, please."
"How long will you be staying?"
Rigby paused for a moment.
"Two days."
"That'll be 3104 yuan."
I suddenly realized that we forgot to convert our money. Apparently Rigby realized that too, as he looked pretty pissed at himself.
"Can you take the equivalent in dollars?"
"Sorry, we can't. I can bill you when you leave if you want. It should give you some time to convert the money you need."
"Sounds good. Thanks for the help." said Rigby.
The receptionist smiled as he handed me the key.
"You guys are on the second floor. Room 223. Have a good stay."
The two of us headed off to the room.
"Man, it's nice to have someone who knows English for once." I said.
"Yeah, true. Maybe I should probably teach you some Mandarin while we're here. You might actually get a chance to talk for once instead of having me say everything."
"That sounds pretty cool. I wouldn't mind learning another language."
Rigby smiled as we finally made it to our room. But as I opened the door and went inside, I noticed Rigby's eyes suddenly widened, as he realized something that he should have done.
"Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. I have to go back to the truck and grab the money before the damn bag gets stolen."
"Good idea." I said as I lightly tossed the truck keys to him.
As Rigby headed back the way we came, I finally made my way through the door and took a look around the room. I lightly whistled as the décor in this room looked pretty impressive for the amount of money the hotel charged for the two of us. Or at least, I assumed it was, considering I didn't know how much it was in dollars.
So, as I waited for Rigby to return, I decided to sit down on the couch and turn on the TV, randomly flipping through channels to see what was on. Unfortunately, there were no English channels, so I decided just to pick one that seemed interesting, wishing that Rigby would teach me some Chinese soon so I could understand what the hell was going on.
Rigby finally returned much later than I thought he would have, carrying the bag of money that we had stashed in the truck, as well as an envelope containing what I assumed must be more money.
"What took you so long? I didn't think we were parked that far away."
Rigby jumped a little bit, no doubt having been lost in thought as he walked in. I was a bit curious about what he was thinking about, but I decided not to worry about it.
"Oh, uh…it turns out that while I was getting the money back out of the truck, I saw that there was a place across the street where I could convert our money."
"Really? Huh, I guess we must have missed it when we were coming in."
"Well anyway, I went in and converted enough money for us to cover the bill for our hotel room and get something to eat, if you wanted to head out sometime while we're here."
My mind wandered temporarily as I wondered what Tibetan food tastes like, before it was brought back to Earth as I remembered something important.
"Hey, did you take the whole bag into the conversion center?"
Rigby sighed before replying.
"No, I only took the money that I needed and left the rest in the truck. Man, you need to lighten up a bit."
"Hey, I'm just being careful. We don't want anyone getting any ideas, especially with the amount of cash we have in that bag."
"I know, I'm being careful too! That doesn't mean I can't have a bit of fun sometimes."
I was a bit flustered at seeing him like this, but as I thought about it, I realized that it was actually nice to see Rigby being cheerful for once, considering the fact that during the entire journey here, he's honestly been pretty sour due to everything that's happened to us.
"Fair enough. You want to watch some TV with me? I'm not really hungry right now."
Rigby looked at me curiously for a second before shrugging and joining me on the couch. Once he got situated, I started speaking to him again.
"Alright, I'm going to need you to help me out on this. I've been watching this one show while you were gone. It seems pretty interesting, but I honestly have no idea what's going on with it. You think you can help me out with it?"
"There's no English speaking channels on this TV?"
"Nope. Kind of a shame, to be honest. They have an English speaking receptionist, but they don't bother to put in TV channels for tourists."
Rigby grunted before replying.
"Alright, give me a sec. I'll see what I can get from this."
Rigby fell silent as he studied the TV, lost in thought as he quickly translated what the people on the TV were saying. Suddenly, his eyes brightened.
"Wow, this actually is pretty cool sounding. Good choice."
"So? What's this about?"
"Oh yeah. Um…it turns out it's an action movie."
"Well yeah, I could have figured that out by myself, genius." I said sarcastically.
Rigby glared at me before continuing on.
"You see the guy that's kicking everyone's butts right now? Well, the evil-looking guy standing above all of the action is the leader of a drug smuggling ring, and he has the good guy's girlfriend."
When I finally realized what was actually going on, I was slightly depressed about how cliché the plot was, but I figured that since the action was pretty spot on, I could look past it.
"Well, at least there isn't a whole lot of dialogue to not understand." I said, shrugging.
Unfortunately, right at the moment I said it, the hero reached the bad guy, and they began talking, which lost me pretty quickly. I turned towards Rigby, who had his full attention on the screen.
"You wanna go get something to eat now? All this talking is starting to annoy me."
However, Rigby looked pretty engaged in the movie, considering he could actually understand, so he pretty much ignored me, and I sighed, deciding that I could deal with watching the rest of the movie.
Thankfully, the final fight came up pretty soon after, and there wasn't a whole lot of talking after the villain finally lost, so I was able to make it through the rest of the movie fine.
"So, are you ready to go eat now?" I asked, slightly exasperated.
"Yeah, I'm kind of starving right now. Did you happen to see any places we could go to eat on the way into town?"
I shook my head, and Rigby groaned.
"Well, I guess we could ask the receptionist. Hopefully the English speaking guy is still there."
Unfortunately he wasn't, so Rigby had to take charge and ask one of the other receptionists. However, rather than giving directions to a place in town, the receptionist pointed us towards a small restaurant that just happened to be inside the building.
"Wow, this place is pretty swanky." I said as we walked towards said restaurant.
"True. Hey, remind me tomorrow that I need to start teaching you some Mandarin. We can't exactly rely on the one guy being here every time."
I nodded, and we both sat down at one of the tables once we arrived.
As we both shared a plate of Tibetan Momo Dumplings, we spent the time discussing the movie we just saw, with Rigby talking about the story and me talking about the action.
"Wow, these dumplings are delicious." I said as I grabbed another.
"I know! We may be here for the wrong reasons, but it certainly is nice getting a chance to try out some food we've never had before."
Finally, after finishing our plate, we paid the bill and started to head back towards our room. Once we finally reached our room and got back inside, both of us started to get ready for bed, but not before Rigby turned towards me.
"I hope you're ready for tomorrow, because my Mandarin lesson isn't going to be just any old language course. I think you might find what I have planned to be very interesting."
Although I was slightly worried about the look Rigby had on his face, I was also pretty interested to see what kind of ideas he had to make learning Chinese to be more interesting.