ALIVE IN BEIJING

So, funny story how China has this thing called "censorship" which seems to prevent you from reading news articles online like "tibet, story of tragedy" or go to free-speechy-websites such as..... blogs.So let's all thank my tech-savvy father, Mr. Rich Bartels, for posting this for me via-email.BUT BESIDES THAT BEIJING IS SO COOL!We got here this afternoon after spending 30 hours on a train from Ulaanbaatar. Getting out of Mongolia was an experience, including our (and by "our" I mean "my") one major fuck up so far which was having my wallet fall out of my pocket when were were in a slightly chaotic rush getting to the train station.... at least there was only about $5 of Mongolian currency in it... and my debit card.... but my lovely parents have already taken care of canceling that shit for me and I have a back up. So, it pays to plan ahead. Getting out of Mongolia was also interesting because Russia and Mongolia have special train tracks that are slightly wider than the rest of the world's, so we spent easily about 6 hours of our train "ride" just sitting at the border as hammers and things slammed and our wagon was crashed repeatedly into the one before it and after it to reconnect it after changing the wheels (you would think they would let us get off for that experience, but apparently not).... when we finally reached the Chinese border at 1:00AM (1:00PM your time, still exactly 24 hours ahead) there was strangely nationalistic muzak-like music being piped through speakers and a weird dark calm. But arriving in Beijing today was NUTS. We stepped off the train and it was like getting off of a plane to the Carribbean. This wall of HEAT and HUMIDITY smacked us in the face and we sweated off about ten pounds of water weight just getting to the taxi that navigated us to our hostel. And compared to Beijing, Ulaanbaatar was all Russia. Beijing is just a whole different story.... huge and modern and CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN and bicycles everywhere and green and trees and another huge fucking rain storm we got caught in (now our 3rd, one for every country so far) and everything is just so DIFFERENT. I love it. It's great. And it's so crowded and crazy! This whole city is St. Petersburg at rush hour, or on any given holiday. Anyway, Meri and I had a great first evening. We just wandered a bit, had a really delicious dinner of Peking duck (seemed appropriate) as recommended by this awesome Indian man who we got to know as he and his extended family were on both of our trains to and from Ulaanbaatar, and we ran into them at a pizza place at Ulaanbaatar on Friday night. It's going to be great though. CHINA. I can't believe we made it all the way from ST. PETERSBURG, COMPLETELY ON THE GROUND. NUTS. Man, and Mongolia was awesome. Mongolia seems all Russia now in comparison to this crazy, amazing place. SO EXCITED.Ok, that's all for now. Another post via-Rich before we take off.-- e.b.e l i z a b e t h a n d e r s e n b a r t e l sr u s s i a n l a n g u a g e & s t u d i o a r t