Life in the desert

August 26 Well, the Gobi has a lot of – you guessed it – sand. On the way here, it was hard to tell whether we were on a road or not because all of the landscape is brown and flat. On our six hour drive, there was one stop where we were able to get water. When we got to the city it looked kind of bare. We have one big school, a general store, a cafe, and a government building on the main street. There were a few people standing nearby, but it was hard to really see them because they were all wrapped up to protect themselves from the dust. There are actually more camels than people – it can get so crowded that you cannot even walk down the road. People use dung as fuel to cook their meals, and it can get very hot because of the weather outside. There is no river, but there is a well that we can fetch water and carry buckets to our house. My Ger is pretty sturdy. The winds can be very fierce, but there are large rocks hanging from its sides to weigh it down so the whole thing wont blow over. I have been warned that the Mongolian dogs can be very dangerous. At night I can hear them howling, but none of them have made it inside my Ger yet. By the way, I'm joking. I only wanted to get your imagination going. The gobi is not what I expected it to be, and its probably not what you expect it to be like either. It definitely will have some extreme weather, but people have been living here for a long time so I'm trying not to worry about it too much.