Siberia Is HUGE.

Woah! Three days and four nights on a train is a long time, but it never felt boring or even cramped, which is surprising because it was pretty cramped.

Ridiculously I did not have my camera out while gaping at the beautiful passing scenery, and took an embarrassingly small number of photos of the outside world. But here's one!

Russia.

Here was our inside world for the last 76 hours:

Camera, Dostoevsky, and Pickles. You think he's set for days, but Jake loves his pickles too much. The next day it's simply Camera, Dostoevsky, and Jake.

It was awesome. I looked out the window for hours at the beatiful scenery. The people were all great, though our Russian is awful and their English is equal to our Russian. Each attempt at getting food, either during our short stops or in the bouncy food car in the back, was always an exercise in charades that ended in hilarity. Luckily everyone was a good sport and we didn't go too hungry. Unfortunately we ran out of pickles, and despite everything we were told, vodka was not in abundance on the train. What's up with that, Russia?!

Pictured: Mind Boggler Thief (Right)

I played chess and learned a new version of checkers with lots of people in other cabins. We turned a lot of heads if we spoke to each other while passing through on the way to the food cart, and by the third day it was well known that we weren't Russians. We were buying some lunch from a woman at a stop when I heard some shuffling behind me, I turned to find a mass of teenyboppers crowded around us, staring. I said, "Hello" and there were many giggles and returned "hellos." I put on my best Russian accent and said, "Kak Jeezn" (what's up, or literally "how's life") and they lost it. If only I could have this kind of success with Russian girls about 15 years older I'd be set. Later I was held up late in the back cars with games of chess, but apparently Andre and Jake were taken hostage by their car (they were a team of some sort, we could never communicate what exactly they were that had 4 women and 30 girls in one car, but it seemed to have something to do with art). They signed hats and posed for photos for a good half hour, apparently.

Not Pictured: 30 More Russians

Apparently the only one not screaming and asking for hat signings was drawing Andre the entire time.

The rest of our time was spent reading books aloud in our car and coming up with a new idea for a book club to be instated upon return to our respective homes (Literature Out Loud (LOL)) which, as I'm discovering for the first time, sounds a lot funnier and more exciting when discussing it with Andre and Jake than it does when writing it for a blog readership of loved ones. But just you wait, it's going to be awesome. We also had our mind boggler stolen by two young Russian kids who were horribly bored and had nothing to do but continually pop over to our cabin and speak in Russian. It was pretty awesome, actually, as Jake and Andre NEVER want to play tic-tac-toe or teach me how to pronounce "My" in Russian (I cannot write how it is supposed to be pronounced, shoot I can't even pronounce it). But goodbye, mindboggler, you've been a good friend since Japan.