Laura Ling and Euna Lee are thrilled to be home after their terrible ordeal in a North Korean jail. Both women are said to be in good health, although they are quite thin and exhausted. They are looking forward to eating fresh food after being served rice with rocks in it while they were in prison.
"[Laura] seems like she's in pretty good physical health so we're very happy about that," Ling's husband, Iain Clayton, told reporters outside their home in Studio City, Calif. "At the moment now she's going to relax and take it easy."
"My sister is absolutely exhausted and just resting," added Ling's sister, Lisa. "She could barely speak she's so tired."
Ling, according to Lisa, not only was happy to be home but also to be able to eat fresh food.
"She was telling us how there were rocks in her rice [in North Korea]," revealed Lisa. "She's anxious just to eat fresh food. I know there's going to be a sushi dinner very soon!"
Their mother Mary woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning to prepare her daughter's first meal: "A special Chinese herbal soup."
When asked by reporters outside the home if she thought there would be a happy ending, Mary described the past few months as "just kind of up and down all the time."
"Some days I think [their release] is happening, some days I say it may not happen. Just scared and wishful at the same time, all the time," she said. "What gave me courage was millions of people all over the world – their encouragement."
It will no doubt be quite an adjustment from being incarcerated in a bare prison cell to being back with their families. So far they have not spoken about their ordeal in any great detail, but they are expected to in the future. It has to have been grim, if the rocks in the rice story is any indication of how they were treated.
