We made it!

After a week of travel, we made it back to our house. It is good to be back in our house. The flights went well. The kids only slept a couple of hours, but were good and healthy. We arrived in Korea after about 12 hours in the air. We had a little three hour layover, much nicer than our typical 20 hour layover! We found our gate and rested a little bit. When we got onto the flight to Mongolia, we had all been awake for about 24 hours. Thankfully we all fell asleep and didn't wake up until our decent into the Ulanbaatar airport.

We had checked 8 Rubbermaid containers and all of them came through without hitch. We walked out and our friend Mike was waiting for us with his big van. He helped us load our half ton of luggage and we drove to our apartment in UB. Our team rents and apartment in the city so that we have a place to go we have work to do in the capital. We arrived there at midnight and all went to bed until 4 am. Then we woke up and had some french toast. We had some work to do when the sun came up and the government offices opened.

First, Peter changed a tire and had it repaired. The man at the repair shop located the holes in the tires by spitting on it repeatedly to see where it leaked air. Then Peter went to register us with the Mongolian government. That took all day and at the close of business it was still not done. So he came home, oh so happy! Thankfully our friends hosted us for dinner and the day wrapped up well!

The next day we went to pick out some paint. The first time we painted our living room, be chose red, yellow and green. I don't know why! Well I had an idea, which ended up looking like a big top circus because the colors were not subtle enough! So we chose a light taupe kind of color. After we painted, I would call the color mushroom pearl. HMMM... ?not exactly what I was hoping for, but MUCH better than the circus I described earlier!

Later on that day we stocked up on supplies: cheese, peanut butter, and chicken. Then we came back to the apartment and drove up to Sukhbaatar. The drive was good an uneventful, save one policeman who decided that the tubs on top of our car were unsafe and he fined us 5,000 tugriks ($4.30) and then we continued up to our friends apartment in the city center here. Our teammate and friend hosted us for dinner and then we all went to bed.

The next day we came out to our house. It was a sad sight all boarded up and abandoned. However, our neighbor and guard for the winter did a great job making sure nothing was stolen. The fence was all there and the house untouched!!! We started to open the numerous locks and pry off two by fours Peter had used to sealed off the garage. All the windows were covered with ply board and screwed in with five million screws, but there was no electricity to see inside the house, or use a drill to remove the screws. We called our friend, who helped us call the electric company. They came out right away and turned on the power! The house was in great order and it wasn't even filled with dust like I thought it would be!

The next day we came back and painted the big top circus room!!! I can't tell you how happy I am to see those colors and the grime on the hallway wall disappear! Painting this room took all day because there are 7 doors and two windows, a staircase, a built in TV cabinet and radiators to paint carefully!

The next day our friends Dashaa, Munkbold, Sharon, Les and his son Victor came to help us move our stuff from the garage at our friends house to our house. We are moving in slowly STILL. We decided to not organize the kitchen yet, since the walls are falling down.

Yesterday we hired a friend of a friend of a friend to repair the walls and today he and his daughter are wallpapering. It looks so clean, fresh and new. We have linoleum counter tops that we are thinking of replacing with tile! I even found a tile in town that I like! That is amazing! It is funny to shop for home goods here. I had only two choices of wallpaper and only four kinds of tile to choose from and one color grout. It makes decisions easy in some ways because I usually hate one of the two choices!!!

SO that about wraps up our week of travel!