mongolia

we are here. after many many hours of sitting on a non-moving train around the china/mongolian border, lots of driving through moonscape, too many nasty toilets/holes to talk about and an introduction to new alphabets, we have made it into another country. so far we've holed up with foreigners and protected ourselves against the cold.
Alex almost lost her mind while riding the train and I did what I could to keep her from plotsing, kvelling, or getting agata. But I didn't do very much except for having enough power on my ipod to watch one episode of 30 Rock. As we sat on a ledge outside the train station (we were locked out of our train for a couple hours) the screen kept getting covered over with sand and I had to brush it off. Apparently Mongolia is a desert. But a cold, windy desert. Another suprising fact was that the town we were stalled in (Earlian (sp? - we are entering the portion of the trip where I can't spell the places I am visiting.)) is a shopping destination for people from Ulan-Bator. This is surprising since for us at least it was an 18 hour train ride to get there.

Getting kicked off the computer now....ttyl.