Finally here

It is the morning of my second day in Mongolia. I was supposed to arrive yesterday, but my flight got delayed in Seoul, Korea.... I stayed in a really nice hotel called the "Hyatt" and had complimentary breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the airport. I was pretty nervous about leaving the airport and spending the night at the hotel, but in the end it turned out alright. A few hours of sleep some good food calmed and relaxed my nerves quite a bit. As I checked out of my hotel, I met a girl from Australia on her way to Ulaan Bataar. She was going to stay with another missionary family as their homeschooler for their kids... Once on the flight [finally] to UB, I also met another girl who was flying to Darkhan. She was returning home from a visit to Vietnam and was quite surprised that not only did I not speak Korean, but also I was having octopus for the first time in my "airplane meal". She was really nice and her english was very good. She taught me how to say "my name is Emily" and "hello" in Mongolian. She also volunteered to help translate for me if I had problems going through" immigration"... I found myself some travel buddies!

Backtracking a little... The flight from Sacramento to Seattle wasn't bad. The seats didn't recline so it was a little uncomfortable. It was a short flight though, so it wasn't all that bad. When I landed, I stayed in the Seattle airport for a while, waiting for my next flight... The flight from Seattle to Seoul was so so so long! We had two meals and I watched two movies. "Remember Me" and "Book of Eli". They had "Shutter Island" and I thought about watching that [since I couldn't get in the movie theatre at home to watch it **cough-CARMEN**], but then I thought I might get scared watching it by myself... :] When we first took off, I kept looking out the window and I saw everything keep getting smaller. We... are so incredibly small. After only seconds in the air, the houses, trees, people all turned super small in comparison with the big blue sky and clouds all around... Amazing.

Anyways, it's about nine in the morning, here in UB. I'm eating breakfast. Later today I'm going to lunch with Aunt Esther and her two girls, Sarah and Joy, Ali, and Karen, and then going sightseeing with Aunt Haniki and Uncle Pieter.