Cameo appearance by MOM AND DAD MOL!

We had the privilege of hosting Mom and Dad Mol for the past two weeks. We picked them up from Incheon airport Tuesday morning on the 22nd of March and they just left us this past Sunday, April 3rd. It was an AMAZING visit! I am pretty sure the Mol's have seen more of Korea than we have now! We were amazed by not their adventurousness! They were up for anything and were able to entertain themselves during the day while we were at work!

Now, we could give you a day by day diary of everything we/they did during the visit, but that might get boring, plus who are we kidding, I can't remember! So here is a quick picture recap of some/most of the highlights (p.s. these seem to be in no particular order):

   

While the Mols were visiting one of our co-workers (Hena) got married! The Mols got to experience the Korean wedding factory as we like to call it!

 

 

 We went and checked out Sangdang fortress right outside of Cheongju. While the weather has been turning warmer day by day here there was still a bit of snow up here!

 The Mols were well taken care of during their visit. Two couples from our church (An elder, Soo-Ik and his family- the bottom left picture, and our Korean teacher, Youngshin, and her husband, Mr. Oh- top right picture) offered to take us out for dinner. 

Youngshin also took out our parents for 2 days of excursions! It was amazing how welcoming and generous everyone was! If you want to hear some more stories you'll have to ask the Mols (or Brian and I) about the random man we met on the bus who made his wife take the Mols out sightseeing for an entire day!

 The first Sunday the Mols were here we headed up the Seoul to show them around and to teach them how to use the subway and bus system so they could make their own trip up there later in the week. While we were in Seoul we visited the area called Insadong. It's an artist/tourist area with lots of little shops to look at. 

 

 

This past Saturday we decided to spend the entire day up in Seoul before we saw our guests off at the airport on Sunday. The pictures above are from the Namsangol Hanok Village. It was a park full of old houses and historical buildings. In the village there was also a time capsule that Seoul put together back in 1994, which was not to be opened until 2394. Pretty neat! 

 

 

 Up in Seoul we also visited the Deoksugung Palace. While this wasn't a major palace back in the day it was very neat to see. It is less maintained and hasn't been redone as recently as some of the others so it was neat to see some of the history. 

  

 While in Seoul we also visited the Namdaemun Market. It's pretty much a HUGE market that has everything anyone could ever need. Brian got sucked into a suit shop and in a matter of minutes the salesman was putting jackets on him. But it kind of seemed like a page out of Goldylocks, too small or too big. 

 You can't really visit Korea without visiting a Noraebong (karaoke room). Our Korean teacher and her husband from our church took us out and got everybody singing (even H!)

 

The Mols also made 1 or 2 visits to our school to meet our students and sit in on 1 or 2 classes. The kids absolutely LOVED having them there and were completely mesmerized by them! H found a new best friend in one of Brian's students, John. And Jenny took a liking to my little student Ruby. The kids are STILL asking where Mr. and Mrs. Mol are and when are they coming back????

We were sad to say goodbye to the Mols, but we knew they were off to do some much better things, AKA Hawaii!!! It was so nice to have that connection from home and hear all of the news from Thunder Bay! The Mols brought many greetings and warm wishes from family back home, we felt very special! You don't realize how much you miss home until you find out how much you're missing out on!

However, lucky for us, we only have to wait 1 more month before we have MORE visitors! At the beginning of May the other set of parents will be arriving! We're so excited for Mom and Dad Wagenaar to come. Ever since the Mols have left I haven't stopped thinking of  our 'itinerary' for the Wagenaar visit! 

P.S. We promise to be a bit more diligent with the blogging world as long as people promise to keep reading and maybe LEAVE A COMMENT every now and then *hint*hint*