Mongolia

The flight from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar (hereafter UB, as the locals call it) was about an hour and a half.  Annie spent a good chunk of it entertaining our neighbors.  As the lady handed her back to me she said, "She could steal us!"

 Here's a shot Drew got of the Gobi desert as we flew over.

Right after we deplaned there was an airline worker standing there with our names on a sign, and she led us into a lovely lounge to meet our Panoramic Journeys representative and our guide while they picked up our luggage for us.  We felt very fancy.  Anna was the PJ rep--I'd emailed back and forth with her a couple times getting ready for the trip.  She came to Mongolia from the UK to volunteer for 2 years when she was a young single adult, then she did a sight-seeing tour of the country afterwards and ended up marrying her Mongolian tour guide.  She has a baby Annie's age.  I want to keep her as a pen pal; what an interesting life.

When our luggage was all collected and loaded, we headed west out of UB into the countryside for a picnic lunch.  

This was our wonderful guide, Gantigmaa.  She had us call her Gana.  She was born in 1965, her oldest daughter is a few months younger than me, and her oldest grandchild is 3 days older than Rafe.  She grew up in a province outside of UB, came to the city as a student to become a Russian teacher under the Soviets, taught for a long time in her husband's province, then came back to the city and learned English to be a tour guide.  She was so kind, helpful, and knowledgeable.

And this was our driver, Suma.  He didn't speak any English, so we got to listen to he and Gana talking Mongolian back and forth to each other the whole trip (which was a welcome change after 3 days in Beijing--the intonation and the vowel sounds of Chinese are very foreign and got to be pretty grating after awhile).  He has 8 grandchildren and from the way he treated our kids all week I can tell he is an amazing grandpa.  In Mongolia, the grandpas don't kiss the babies; they hug them close and give them a quick sniff or two.  I almost got it on camera once, but I stopped the video too soon.  Shooty! 

While we waited for lunch to be ready (they wouldn't let us help), Drew taught Vivi and Rafe to shoot some arrows.  Look how tall Rafe has gotten recently!

I wandered down to take a closer look at a Mongolian shrine (ovoo) we had passed on our way to the picnic spot (which Suma had gotten to by just pulling off the road wherever he pleased and driving off into the field).  They were all over Mongolia, sometimes like a wooden tripod covered with bright pieces of cloth, sometimes just a big cairn with a pole in the middle.  It's good luck for travelers to circle them 3 times in a clockwise direction, and people often leave offerings.  Drew saw a couple that had crutches next to them.  Gana said if people get better from an injury they will leave the crutches as an offering of thanks.  

This one had the beautiful Old Mongolian script on it.  They use the Cyrillic alphabet now after being buddies with the Soviet Union, but Gana said they're starting to teach the Old Mongolian alphabet in school again. 

 

 Our first lunch in Mongolia should have tipped us off to how the rest of our meals would go.  First they set up a stove in the back of the van to heat up enough chicken and bell pepper shashlik (kebabs) to feed 8 people, and in the meantime set out bread, cheese, salami, halved cherry tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, yogurt, bananas, and oranges, all in enormous portions.  I am not used to having my food intake overestimated, but every single meal, we were fed till we were full to bursting, then fed more till we were sick, then fed even MORE until we had to beg them not to bring out any more food.  When I say we, I mean Drew and I.  The kids, who had so far existed on plain white rice in China, mostly ate yogurt and bread in quantities that appeared worryingly small to Gana.  But I will not be surprised if Annie gained 5 pounds on this trip--Gana made sure she got lots of food at meals, and was constantly suggesting that Annie might like to be breastfed.  I am pretty sure that is the only reason I didn't gain 5 pounds with how much food we were eating.

Annie working off her lunch

 While we were feasting, Vivien and Rafe were having a grand time running free in probably the biggest field they've ever set foot on in their lives.  Seeing them out there made me feel very nostalgic.  It made me think of pioneer trek, long drives through the desert to visit grandparents, hiking and bike riding with my family in Arizona and New Mexico and Utah, wandering through undeveloped Cedar Hills when we first moved to Highland . . . Actually much of Mongolia felt very familiar, like a slightly more Asian American Southwest.  I loved being able to introduce my kids to a climate that feels like it's part of my soul.

There were tons of grasshoppers out.  Every time you took a step there would be a spray of them leaping out of your way, like you were walking in water.  They were hard to see when they weren't moving though.

Gana and Suma had chosen the spot because there was a group nearby training for the national horse races.  There is a big festival in UB in July, like the Mongolian Olympics, but with only three sports: wrestling, archery, and horse racing.  The horse races are long distance, and the jockeys are usually between 5 and 13 years old.  The boys were riding bareback, but the man that was with them was riding in the graceful, floating way of all the Mongolian herdsmen we saw--standing balanced in his stirrups like it's nothing.  We tried riding later.  It's a lot harder than it looks.

 Which is maybe why some of them just stick with motorcycles instead.

 After lunch we made our way out to Khustai National Park to try to get a glimpse of the wild horses.  On the way we saw fields of wheat and rape grain.  We also puzzled over these telephone poles, which end 2 feet above the ground and are tied to cement supports.  We're not quite sure why.

 The drive was probably about 2 hours, much of it over bumpy dirt roads.  We saw lots of Marmots, a couple eagles, and a few beautiful Demoiselle cranes.  Gana said all the native Mongolian wild horses either died out or were taken away to zoos by the 1960s, so the ones that live in Khustai now have been carefully reintroduced into the wild from zoo breeding programs.  They started with 16, and now Gana said there are between 200 and 300 living in the park.  I guess they usually come down to the river in the evenings to get water, but they stayed up high on the mountain while we were there.  We could see them really well through our binoculars.  It was like a scene from The Man From Snowy River.  I tried to take a picture of them through the binoculars.  It did not turn out well, but I circled where the horses are, so you can pretend.

Vivien was unable to see them through the binoculars.  She was pretty disenchanted with the whole venture, actually.  I seem to recall several times when I was little when Dad took us to go look at the "elk" and we would drive a long way and spend a long time looking at an empty field.  And if he did spot any through his binoculars, I was never able to figure out how to see them when he passed the binoculars over.  I remember feeling a lot like Vivien looks below.  At least we got to listen to him making his elk noise, which is always entertaining.  

 There was a tourist ger camp at the entrance to Khustai national park where we stopped for a moment to use the bathroom and watch a video about the wildlife.  I had to take a picture of their basketball court, because we saw quite a few of these during our trip, out in the middle of nowhere.

We were actually staying at a different tourist ger camp about an hour back towards UB.  It was in a beautiful valley aways off the highway.  

 Here is the ger we stayed in, outside . . .

 . . . and in.

There was a bag of water hanging by the open window at the top.  Gana said it is to keep out the mosquitoes.  

And our key had a bone hanging from it.  I thought it was really weird at first, and then I started noticing they use the bones everywhere--in their decorations, to play games, as instruments, to tell fortunes.  They are sheep ankle bones.  We made sure to pick up a big bag of them as a souvenir on our way home.  

They had a good restaurant at the camp.  For dinner we first had a salad with a tasty mustardy dressing, then mashed potatoes, purple cabbage, steamed vegetables, a lamb and potato stew, then a big bowl of fresh yogurt afterwards.  Once again, proportions were way bigger than we needed/wanted.

 They had nice bathroom facilities.  There were showers in the back, though the water was cold in the women's bathroom that night, so the kids went with Daddy.

 When we came back from dinner there was a fire crackling away in our ger's stove, and the kids sat in front of it for awhile warming up while I got the baby ready for bed (it got cold once the sun went down).

In the morning we woke up and had breakfast at the restaurant (deep fried Mongolian butter cookies, cream of broccoli soup, boiled eggs, fried eggs, bread and cheese, sausage, salami, fresh vegetables, boiled vegetables, a type of Mongolian pancake, fruit juice, and yogurt).

And then it was time for the nomadic show.  We started with a yak/camel ride over to the medieval nomadic "village" they have set up across the valley.  Once there we walked into a ger where they offered us traditional Mongolian food (dried cheese curd, milk tea, and vodka distilled from fermented yogurt, which we discreetly set aside . . . They told us visitors were usually forced to drink 3 whole cups of it), and described how things would have been set up in the home.  The woman had the right side of the ger, the man had the left, and straight across from the door was a shrine.  Children slept on the floor on felt mats.  They showed us how they make yogurt in big metal bowls over their wood stove.  There was also an enormous skin bag (bigger than Vivien) hung on a frame that they use to beat milk while it ferments so they can make vodka out of it.  After some Q&A, one of the workers sang for us and 2 of the boys (they were 15 and 17 years old) played a couple traditional songs on their horse head fiddles, which have two strings made of horse hair.  

 After that they took us outside and dressed us in their winter coats and let us ride any animals we hadn't gotten to the first time.  Then they showed us how they distill the vodka (Gana said it would be extremely rude if we didn't taste it, so we put the cups to our lips--not my favorite drink), how they dried meat for winter, how they made felt for their ger walls (beating the wool to tear it up, then getting it wet, rolling it up, and dragging it back and forth behind a horse until it's good and matted), how they make cheese curd (which was very sweet and tasty) . . .

 . . . how they shear the sheep, how they make rope out of cow hide, and how to play all the games with the sheep ankle bones.  We had a Mongolian wrestling demonstration by the fiddle boys.  There were also two smaller boys who kept following the bigger boys around and teasing them, trying to sneak up on one and wrestle him to the ground.  Finally they showed us how families used to pack everything up on their yak carts and move it from place to place.  They let us ride on a cart.  "The wooden wheels creak as they rolled along. . ."  I made you a little video set to one of the songs the boys played for us.

After our show we went back to the camp for lunch at the restaurant (a vegetable soup that Gana said was pretty common fare, a Russian salad Drew remembered having in Romania, and a main dish of buuz and khuushuur--dumplings and deep friend lamb pies).

And then it was time to go back to UB.  The workers all walked us out to the car to say goodbye.

We were trying to catch a 14:00 sacrament meeting in UB, but the traffic was so bad we didn't get there until 14:40.  We told Gana that we should probably just go straight on to the hotel since we had already missed sacrament and wouldn't be able to understand the rest of the Mongolian service, but Suma thought we should at least get out and look at the church.  I think he thought our churches are a lot cooler than they really are . . . We made the kids sit through the last 20 minutes of the meeting  (which they HATED.  Loudly.) and I talked to the senior couple there for a little bit afterwards.  They're from Wyoming and said we'd picked a good time to come because there had been lots of rain lately so the countryside was very green.

 After church we went to the hotel to rest for a bit.

 Panoramic Journeys made these little packs for Vivien and Rafe that had coloring books, crayons, binoculars, compasses, origami paper, glue sticks, etc. inside.  They were awesome.

 Our view.  I loved how colorful UB was.

 That evening we headed to a show by Tumen Ekh, Mongolia's premier traditional performance ensemble.  We had a nice drive through the city, taking in all the sights.  We stayed at the Tuushin hotel which was a block away from Genghis Khan Square.  The elections for Parliament were going on while we were there, so we saw lots of groups campaigning all over the city.

We passed by the wrestling stadium.  In Mongolian wrestling, you can't let your knees, elbows, or upper body touch the ground.

 Also, you have to wear this outfit:

Annie very much enjoyed the nonexistent car seat laws.

 This is the view from the doorstep of the building where Mongolia's premier traditional performance ensemble performs.  It's like a junkyard.

 There were lots of funny juxtapositions like that in UB.  Here's a little section of crumbly wall in between two beautiful new hotels.

Thankfully, the quality of the performance did not mirror the surroundings.  The show had a mix of dancers, musicians, singers, and a contortionist.  You could pay to video tape or take pictures, but we decided to just sit and enjoy it.  And enjoy it I did!  Many tears . . . Rafe's favorite is the purple girl.  Just so you know.  

 Drew and I both felt like their music sounded similar to cowboy music at times.  The instruments were really cool, and some of the male singers did throat singing, which is crazy.

Here's a sample.

They also had a double bass sized horse head fiddle in the ensemble.  This one on display in the lobby was close to its size.  

After the show we ate dinner at a restaurant right next to the hotel that had lots of traditional Mongolian food.  When we were done we walked outside into a little tornado of cottonwood fuzz, and felt even more like we were in the southwest.   

We spent the night at the hotel, then in the morning we started our journey out to Terelj National Park, east of UB.  We stopped at a dinosaur museum in a mall on our way out of town.  Rafe correctly identified this dinosaur skeleton as a saurolophus without help.  I am agog.

 Here's a picture of the place in the Gobi desert where they find the best fossils.  Look familiar?

 There were some pretty cool fossils on display.  Here are a velociraptor and a protoceratops, locked forever in the struggle that killed them.

 And here are a bunch of ittly bittly protoceratopsians.

 And the forearms of a therizinosaurus.

Weirdest dinosaur . . .

After the museum we continued on our way.  Here's a big group of ovoo. 

 Next stop was the biggest equestrian statue in the world!

We sidled past the fierce Mongol warriors . . .

 . . . to take a very windy picture at the foot of the monument.  Vivi's hair is my favorite.

 In the bottom of the monument is a visitors center.  There is a giant Mongolian boot.

 And a giant golden horse whip.  The monument is here because this spot is supposedly where a young Genghis Khan found the golden horse whip that inspired him to become a conqueror.

 You can climb up the inside of the statue and come out on the horse's head for a nice panoramic view.

 Vivien and Rafe did not like it.  They wanted to get down as soon as possible after this picture was taken.

 The statue was built in 2008 out of stainless steel and looks off to the east, where Genghis Khan was born.  Once the communists were no longer in power after 1990, Genghis Khan became a lot more popular as the Mongolian people tried to find their identity again.  It is a cool statue.  Though the cows seem pretty ambivalent about it.

We had another picnic lunch nearby and watched the herds of goats and sheep and horses and cows moving freely all around us.

From there we drove into Terelj National Park to meet the nomadic family we would be staying with for the next two days.  It was beautiful.  

 The rock formations were awesome.  This one is called "Turtle Rock."

We drove as far as we could, but to get the rest of the way to the nomadic family we needed to cross a river that was too deep for our car, so we switched to carts.  

 First we crossed in the cart, then it went back for our luggage while we observed life around the river.  The woman on the horse is carrying a baby who can't be more than 1 or 2 months old.  The guys in between the horses are totally drunk and singing.  The boys in the front's parents are sleeping in a car just out of the picture to the left.

 Once our luggage was across we followed the cart on foot for awhile until we were met by another cart.  They were pulled by animals called hainags (said "haniks"), which are a cross between yaks and cows.

We hitched a ride.  It was fun for awhile.

We got to see calves, foals, lambs, and kids.

I had Gana teach me to count to 20 in Mongolian.

But after an hour, everyone was getting a little bit tired of bumping along in the sun and wind.  

And then we arrived!  Here is our hostess, Bujee, in front of her ger.  Bujee does not speak any English, but she has smiley eyes.

Here is the outhouse.  It was off down the hill aways from everything else.  There was a big bag of sawdust to sprinkle down the hole after you pooped.

Here is the kitchen shack.

 Here is our host Nara, lighting the fire for Bujee so she can cook dinner for everyone (19 people).  Nara speaks English very well.

 She has a wood stove to cook on and a couple countertop burners.  Underneath the table are more pots, and big bowls full of milk products in varying stages of preparation.  Gana said milk, "meehlhk."

She has one knife and one cutting board and no running water.  

Besides her work table and a cupboard that holds dishes and some foodstuffs, there are a bunch of stools that they move around wherever they need them to be.  And that's it.

 Bujee's mother was there helping out.  She was mending some clothes on this old sewing machine.

And when she was done she was very happy to meet Annie.

Here is dinner from our first day--mashed potatoes, stir-fried vegetables and lamb, and rice.

 So, Panoramic Journeys owns a ger that Nara and Bujee host people in, but there had been a mistake and they were actually double booked (a group of friendly Kiwis and a well-traveled German girl were staying in the Panoramic Journeys ger).  So Nara and Bujee put us up in their own ger, and they and their two children and our guides stayed in a tent behind it.

 But I didn't know this at first, so when we got there I started poking around in the dressers to find a place to put our clothes.  The first few drawers had normal things like toilet paper in them, but then I opened one that was already full of clothes, and then the one below, where I found several sheep ankle bones and a hunk of dried meat, which seemed odd.  Then the next one had a big bowl of old clotted cream just sitting in there . . . so then I was pretty sure it wasn't the Panoramic Journeys ger.

They brought in a sink for us with a bucket of water to fill the reservoir on top.  It drained down into a bucket kept in the cabinet below.  They also brought in a washing machine in case we needed to wash anything.  I'm not sure how it worked.  I'd planned for all our washing to happen at hotels anyway.  

 The top window let in a lot of light, which was nice during the day.  Mongolians used to use their gers as a kind of sundial to tell time, based on where the light was hitting inside the ger.  Mongolia is about the same latitude as Seattle, and I was unpleasantly reminded of the summer sun hours.  It doesn't get really dark till about 11pm and the sky starts to get light again at 3am.  It made sleeping rather difficult.

But not impossible.  

That first night after dinner we just relaxed and explored.  There was a stream nearby for wading.

The meadows were full of flowers.

 And Vivien does love to pick a good bouquet . . .

 Rafe joined in.

 They had a blast.

But Rafe was less than willing to mingle with the locals.  

There were several children from neighboring gers over to play with Nara and Bujee's daughter Bayasa (said "Buy-sah").  She is 6 years old.  She was very interested in Annie, but not very careful and she didn't speak English, so I kind of had to keep a sharp eye on her when she was around.  And man, that girl could eat!  We'd have eaten until we didn't even want to look at food ever again, and she'd wander into the ger after eating her own sizable dinner and tuck in to whatever was left on the table.  I am not used to being out-eaten.  And by a 6 year old!

Gana said they usually eat a big bowl of yogurt before bed in the summer time, so they brought that in for us both nights and we ate it in front of our wood stove.  

 The next morning we had breakfast of semolina cereal, a pancake that was like Indian Fry Bread, clotted cream skimmed off the top of the fresh milk, cheese, and fresh yogurt. The kids had their bread slathered with Nutella.  It is a good thing that we are not lactose intolerant.

 The next day was a little colder.  The kids mostly played by a little stream, looking for wildlife . . .

 or with blow up bouncy horses that our guides had brought.

Gana made Vivien a flower crown.

And Annie practiced walking.

 We watched the nomadic family do their multitudinous chores.  Here is Bujee making cheese curd.  This is one of the main products they sell.

After Nara got back from collecting more firewood, we had a short archery session.  

 I put the baby down for a nap and then Drew and I went on a horse ride while Suma and Gana held down the fort.  My horse was named Hugo.  Nara said Hugo is always hungry, but he is his favorite horse.

 Drew rode a horse named . . . Andrew.  The Mongolians don't usually name their horses, but some tourists had named these several years ago, and the names stuck.

 We rode for about an hour and a half over the countryside; we passed herds of livestock, forded a river (the farm dogs that came along with us looked like little floating blobs of fur swimming along beside the horses), and then up a big hill, where we got off to give the horses a little rest and admire the view.  

 Nara said it's his favorite spot.

 We could definitely see why.

We liked it too.

 When the horses had gotten a good enough rest, we hopped back on and headed home.  Andrew and Drew were itching to gallop, and Hugo was not to be left behind, so we had several wild romps on the way back.  It was thrilling, but fell into that group of high speed activities that require you to have good control, or at least know how to fall well to avoid injury.  I do not have good control or know how to fall well, and I think I've had too many babies to gallop on a horse.  Every time Hugo would land, all the jiggly parts of my body would get jolted and my pelvic floor muscles were none too happy about the increased pressure on my bladder combined with the riding posture.  So I spent most of the ride back intoning, "No, no, NO, no, no," and pulling back on the reins to keep Hugo from flying.  Which turned out to be lucky for me, because then I got a front row seat to watch Drew trying to slow down a galloping Andrew by turning him to one side, losing his balance when Andrew proved unresponsive, and falling to the ground, emerging from the dust cloud seconds later, grass-stained but unbroken, to walk sheepishly back to camp after his horse.  I only laughed a little.

Annie was happy to see us when we got back.  She really wanted to eat lots of gross things.  Mongolians say "Bah! Bah!" to their babies when they put yucky stuff in their mouths.

The rest of the evening was very pleasant.  First we gave the family the gifts we had brought them (homemade chocolate chip cookies, toothbrushes and toothpaste, lotion, solar powered flashlights, a multi-tool and a pair of pants for Nara, a good pocketknife for Tsinde, a set of Tangrams to play with, and some pet shaped silly bands, just for fun).  Then we sat around and talked and watched a hawk making lazy circles in the sky.

I got to help Bujee make the khuushuur for dinner that night.  She made them so beautifully . . .

I did not.  But they were nice about it.

Drew shot some more arrows with Nara until his scholar hands couldn't take it anymore.  They tried taping them for a few more rounds, but to no avail.

And I think the best part about the evening was that Nara and Bujee's 15 year old son Tsinde was around, and he was so much fun.  He made Annie laugh and laugh!

And he played with Vivi and Rafe too.  Here she is hiding from him at the door of the ger.

Rafe had been playing tug-of-war with some cord that Drew brought earlier, and that was good for lots of games too.

We did some jump roping, then I had everyone try the limbo . . .

. . . until Vivien and Rafe got too mad at us and made us use the rope to set up a finish line for their horse race.

After dinner we got to go with Bujee and Tsinde to milk the cows.  (Tsinde was seriously the happiest, most helpful 15 year old boy I have ever met.  And he had a LOT of chores).  

They had all the calves in a little enclosure, and Tsinde would let one calf out at a time to go to its mother and (I'm assuming) trigger the let-down reflex.  Then they'd remove the calf, tie up the mother's legs, and milk away.

Bujee was very patient and let me try.  I think I would be diagnosed with "inefficient latch."  I think I might've had a cup or 2 of milk in there after 5 minutes.  

Bujee milked all 8 of the cows in about an hour and got almost 20L of milk.  It was impressive!

That night it rained and rained and rained.  I felt so terrible, listening to the storm lashing our ger and picturing our sweet host family and guides out in their flimsy tent.  It turned out they had all taken refuge in the tiny kitchen shack that night, but they were so matter of fact about it, like it wasn't even an inconvenience.  Unfortunately, we had not thought to pull all our things up off the floor, so my dirty clothes pile, both the backpacks, and all of Drew's clothes were totally sopping by the time we discovered them in the morning.  We wrung everything out as best as we could and hung it in front of the stove to dry out as much as possible during breakfast.  We had Fry Bread again.  I made the mistake of telling Bujee that I loved it so much and could eat a lot of it.  I forgot that my "a lot" is not Mongolian "a lot."  She came back a minute later with two more for us to take on the road.  We ate them for dinner!

The night rains had made the river too high even for the yak carts (dang . . .) so one of the neighboring herdsman offered to take us back to the river in his Jeep, where we would cross to our car by way of a footbridge.  We bid a fond goodbye to the family, then piled into the Jeep (that had big long cracks in the windshield) with the neighbor and his family, who were going to take advantage of the trip to look for some of their animals that had wandered away during the night.  It was a wild, crazy ride.  The road was bumpy, muddy, and flooded in places.  It was like Indiana Jones!  The rocking motion of the Jeep put Annie, who had been very cranky all morning, right to sleep.

 When we got to the river, the driver decided it wasn't too high, so he just drove us across.  But here is the bridge we would have used.

 Once we were all loaded up, we started on our way back to UB.  We saw dinosaurs.

 And the Reading Man rock.

And then right outside of the park we pulled off to the side of the road to meet Pujee, the bird man.  In this little car, he and his assistant had an owl, two eagles, and a vulture.

First came the owl.  Pujee said they had ironically named it the Mongolian word for "moody," because apparently he's extremely even tempered.  We were allowed to touch his soft feathers.

 And hold him close and gaze into his beautiful eyes . . .

 Next came this eagle.  I cannot report what kind of eagle it is with any degree of certainty.  I'll have to ask Drew later.

Suma was NOT happy about putting the kids so close to the beak and the talons.  He kept moving them farther away from the bird.

 Next was this eagle who is the same age as Vivien.

 And last but not least, the vulture.

 It did not want to be held or pose for pictures.

 It just wanted to climb back in the trunk where it came from.

 When we were all done looking at the birds, Pujee packed up and away he went.  We saw him later on the side of the highway near UB with all his birds on stands for passers-by to come and see.

Another view of colorful UB on our way back.

 We stopped at the state department store to do a little souvenir shopping (we picked up our sheep bones, got Rafe some cool Mongolian boots with the upturned toe, Drew picked a little painting of a Mongol warrior for his office, and I got a lucky sky blue silk scarf to add to my summer family room decor).  I was sorely tempted to buy one of the horse head fiddles, but after trying some of them out I wasn't thrilled about the sound of the instruments they had on display.  After shopping we went to a Mongolian Grill restaurant that said "since 1206 . . ." under its name.  It was a buffet type place.  I went through the main course line, then the sides line, then picked at Vivien and Rafe's food so Gana wouldn't see it and be upset that they hadn't eaten anything, and then she came over with an entire new plate of food, at first asking me to share it with her, then just leaving it for me to eat.  So. Much. Food.  Blerg.

A little Totoro painting on the way to the restaurant in UB

That evening we checked back into the hotel and I tried jogging over to the National Museum for a quick look while Drew watched the kids, but it was closed.  So I paused in Genghis Khan square for a bit to take it in.  Here is the Parliament building.

 And the view from the other direction.  The sales people with their paintings started coming towards me at this point, so I headed back to the hotel as quickly as possible.

 In the morning we left bright and early for the airport.  Gana and Suma walked us inside to the check-in desk, where Gana gave me a gift (a beautifully framed model of a golden horse head fiddle), then they walked us up through the line as far as they could go, kissed and sniffed all of our children several times and gave us hugs and told us to keep in touch.  It felt like saying goodbye to family, so I of course started bawling, and the security guy was looking at us like we're crazy . . . But we did finally make it through the line and into the waiting area, where they had a HUGE fiddle on display.

 And a wonderful play area.  Those bouncy horses really are fun toys.

 And then we were on our way home.

A couple more countries checked off our list and some wonderful memories to add to our time here in Japan.  Twas a grand adventure!