We're here!

After 24 hours of travel, and losing Saturday completely, we are finally in UlanBator! It's noon on Sunday here, 14 hours ahead of home where you're all getting ready to go to bed.

We slept most of the 13 hours from LA to Beijing, and the flight attendants kept the cabin dark for most of that time, so our systems have adjusted to the time change pretty well so far.

This picture is the view from our hotel, looking northeast. This is small, but off in the distance on the hillsides, people are living in gers, or yurts. As we flew over the countryside coming in, we saw a number of ger settlements, but no roads.

Erdene, Bolor and their little boy, Khuslee, picked us up at the airport and helped us get settled into our hotel. On the way into the city from the airport, we saw a lot of livestock on the open range--no fences here. Several times we saw small crowds gathered around sheep and goats, and they explained that the people from the city were buying their meat from the people from in the countryside.

It is very beautiful here. They've had a lot of rain, and it looks like the areas around home with buttes after lots of rain. Our hotel is very nice, and there are a lot of westerners staying here. We recognize most of them from our last two flights!

We are pretty STINKY, since we haven't seen soap and water and we've been in the same clothes since Friday afternoon. We're going to shower and rest up a little, and then Erdene and Bolor will pick us up for dinner and a night seeing the sites of UlanBator. They are the nicest family, and we're so lucky to have them for hosts for the next two weeks.