We're just sitting out here watching airplanes

It might not be very wise to only get 2 hours of sleep the night before you leave. Also, 4 o'clock in the morning comes really, really early. We made it to the airport without any problems. We left Columbia to go to Chicago.There we had a layover for a couple of hours. (that airport is BIG!) 

And then the adventure began with an 13 1/2 hour plane ride to Seoul, Korea. They trick you with offering you a personal T.V. screen in the headrest of the seat in front of you and movies (pretty good ones). However, it does not make up for the fact that you are packed up like sardines with an aching bottom. Then about three hours in you feel bad for waking the nice, sleeping Korean man with the aisle seat to go to the "lavatory". The excitement of the awesome movies wears off after you have watched about four of them and you realize you probably should save some for the ride back home.

The food. We were given lunch, dinner, and snacks. However, being on a Korean airplane you don't really know what your asking for to eat. You just say "I'll take the chicken, please." You try not to drink so much because you don't want to keep waking up the nice, sleeping Korean man with the aisle seat. It was very hard trying to go to sleep because for one there is not a comfortable position anywhere except for those first class people with their lounging cubicles (how much does it cost to upgrade?). Then when you do fall asleep for a 10 minute nap you wake up sweating because your so hot and still extremely uncomfortable.

While watching these lovely movies, you are interrupted about every hour with *ding* "fg;guih;gjndgfhsuigf;ajgfuj" (that's our version of Korean) and then " Ladies and Gentleman, we are experiencing turbulence. Please fasten your seat belt. " (We know we are because we can feel it).

There was an option on the screen to check to see how much longer the flight was until we reached our destination. Which only made it worse because we checked it every five minutes for last two hours of the plane ride. We were like five year olds asking "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" We should have taken the wine they offered us, it might of made the flight go by faster.

After we got to Korea the last thing we wanted to do was get on another airplane. Lucky for us (enter sarcasm here) we had another layover. Still not having slept more than five hours for the past 30 hours, you can say we looked like death warmed over. Which is why you will never see any picture of us at this time. Finally we boarded the last flight to Ulaanbaatar. It was another 3 hour flight in which we didn't sleep. Luckily, we didn't have a nice, sleeping Korean man blocking the aisle. We landed at about 11p.m. our time 11 a.m. your time. First we had to find our suitcases. We watched a dog sniff the bags on the conveyor belt. (perhaps the most exciting part of our trip so far) We finally got them after pushing our way through the crowd and headed to customs.We got through customs pretty easily after waiting in a long line (where we were shoved). Then we pushed our way (literally) through the taxi men to search for our ride. (Before leaving for a trip you should probably check to see who is picking you up) Good thing our guy had a sign. We got to the van and were on our way!

Laura and Nicole