Happy Birthday big brother!

My brother turns the big 3-5 on July 3rd, when I will be camping in the middle of nowhere! Since I didn't know if I would take my Kindle or not, I am posting this a bit early :)

Happy happy birthday Jeremy :)

I hope that you have a great birthday celebrating with everybody up in New Hampshire!

Frost Family on my birthday a few Christmas' ago...

Jeremy and our neighbor, Imogene, in Alabama. I think Jeremy was in high school in this picture...

And Jeremy and Imogene 2 years ago when we went to Bama for Christmas...

When Jeremy was in elementary school at University Place, his class planted a tree. Every year my parents took a picture of him in front of this tree...as both he and the tree grew. He's in high school maybe in this pic...

And here he is at Christmas 2 years ago. We hope this tree is still standing after the horrible tornado went through Tuscaloosa...

Happy birthday big brother :)

Way-Back-Wednesday #7: Hayley's getting married!

Since I have a somewhat stable internet availability here in K-grad (which will hopefully only get better upon my being able to get internet in my apartment!), I am actually able to do a Way-Back-Wednesday post...

One of the things that I knew I would be missing when I signed up for the PC was different friends weddings over the next two years. I'm at an age right now where EVERYONE is getting engaged and married...and I'm over 5000 miles away in Ukraine. Without further ado...today's blog post:

One of the first people I met in the Interior Design program at OU, Miss Hayley Holman, is becoming a Mrs. this weekend! I'm not sure when we met or knew we would become friends, but it was definitely sometime during our first year of college.

Jenna (who is ALSO married now, and I already missed her wedding on May 15. SO sad!), Lydia, Hayley, and Beth

Hayley transferred to the Art Institute of Dallas to finish her Interior Design degree after our sophomore year at OU. I was sad to see her go, but she was incredibly good about coming back up to Norman after that, especially for OU games :) I always got a phone call from her, even if it was just for a quick hug and hello as she drove through town.

one of Hayley's weekends in Norman

Lydia, Hayley, Beth (who is ALSO engaged now, don't know when she's getting married but I'm sure it will be sometime while I'm still overseas...), and Jenna

OU/Texas 2007 I think...

We ran into each other at OU/Texas a few years ago waiting to get on the dart! Too funny.

One of my favorite memories of Hayley was going to VEGAS with her for the very first time. Her cousin was getting married and I got the chance to tag along. That was the first destination wedding I had ever been to and let me tell you, it was a LOT of fun. The couple got married at the Marriott Resort on the edge of town with the beautiful mountains in the background. The bachelor and bachelorette parties were on Thursday night of the long weekend, the rehearsal dinner was on Friday, and the wedding was on Saturday! It was absolutely lovely.

When Hayley called me in Januay to ask me what I was doing this summer... I knew something was up. I was about to leave on a trip to ski in New Hampshire...and would actually find out days later that I was accepted into the PC. But sweet Hayley knew how my summers were usually packed full of mission trips with the church and she wanted to make sure I save the date for HER WEDDING :)

Hayley, Lydia, and Beth...Christmas maybe 2006?!

Happy Wedding Weekend Hayles :) love you dearly and can't wait to hear all about your new adventures as a wifey! Sorry I am not there to stand by your side as a bridesmaid, but I'm there in spirit :) love you!

P.S. Also scheduled for this weekend is a bachelorette party for Miss Rachel Fenn who is getting married soon as well :) hope y'all have a WONDERFUL weekend at the lake!!!

P.P.S. happy birthday matthew robert schlegel :)

Swearing-In: part 2

So we're actually going to flash back a little and explain the swearing-in retreat. On Monday, June 13, 2011, we left our training city of Oster and headed to Kiev for a 4 day retreat with all 103 other PCTs waiting to get sworn in. All of us in the Oster cluster had to get to the bus station with ALL of our luggage by 8:30 that sad Monday morning. I won't tell you how many bags I ended up having...partly because I can't remember, but partly because it's embarrassing :) My host mom was working so I said goodbye to her the night before, but my host dad and sister took me to the bus station :)

Andrei, Christy, and me!

The Oster bus station...this is where we met every time we left our lovely little training city to travel to Kozelets or Kiev or Chernigov.

Mark and his family

Jamie and his fam

Didn't catch a picture of Cassi and her family because they had a flat tire on the way to the bus station!

This is all of us and our families about to leave :( definitely a sad day. Can't wait to go back and visit!

After arriving in Kiev and getting settled into dorm rooms (I roomed with Hayley and completely forgot to take a single picture of our room), we had to meet in one of the conference rooms to find out where we would be living for the next two years. This was a moment that we had been waiting for FOREVER. Definitely before we came to Ukraine.

The concert hall where all of our meetings were held during the swearing-in retreat.

Jamie and Mark...and Jeff creeping in the background....anxiously awaiting the news!

The Kozelets gang...MK, Kymmy (Gibbler), Matt, Maria, and Anne

Jeff, Ed, and Tondraya

And then...they started doing the announcements. Ukraine is split up into 24 oblasts (think states) that are then divided into 10 regions. They announce your site placement by region, so at the beginning you really have no clue where you're going except to one of two or three oblasts that that region includes. This is what it looked like on the powerpoint slideshow:

Each region has a Regional Manager, a full-time PC employee. The RM is who I would contact with immediate questions about work, counterparts, travel, etc. My RM is named Tanya, as seen in the picture below. Each RM gets to announce the people going to that region and THEN the names are put up on the powerpoint...

Region 7 includes the Odessa and Kirovogradskaya oblasts, so upon immediate reaction I just knew I would be going to a room with all of the people listed on the slide. It was in those meeting rooms that we would find out about our actual sites and what organization we would be working with. After all 10 regions were announced and everybody was dismissed, we headed to our new conference rooms to meet with our regions. However, first, we had to stop at the country map posted outside of the large room...look at the next pic why!

It was complete and utter chaos. They definitely need a bigger map because all 103 people were trying to crowd around and see where we were going...

There's my name!

That was day 1 of the Swearing-In Retreat...get ready for day 2 and 3 and 4 soon!

P.S. It has STILL been raining on and off today in k-grad. I vacuumed my apartment, will mop later tonight, and have been watching Friends due to this weather. I've also been reading..but in the past week or so I think I've read 2 or 3 books. Guess I need to start keeping track of them!

P.P.S. I skyped for the first time since leaving in March! Got to skype with my parents for about an hour and a half yesterday...and maybe 20-30 minutes with my brother. Oh, the wonders of technology... :)

Swearing-In: part 1

Hello hello!

I've been absent from the blogging world for a bit and will probably continue to be for the next little while. Rest assured, I'll have lots of pics for you when I get back from my WEEK LONG CAMPING TRIP. Yes, that's right. I, Lydia Frost, will be living outside for a week. The ultimate hater of bugs and everything that goes with them. I leave on Friday and will get back on the following Thursday I think. This is where I'll be going, the южный буг River! BTW, that is pronounced yewni-buhg...just fyi :)

Anywho, this post is about the Swearing-In (not sure if that's supposed to be hyphenated?) Retreat. So, without further ado, here are a few sites that you can look at for some videos and pictures of the event!

This website has some great pictures captured...including one of me!

This website has almost the entire ceremony broken up into different videos. Not gonna lie...I didn't watch all of the videos, but that's mainly because I was there in person to watch them.

I am currently sitting in an internet cafe I found here in K-grad (Kirovograd, the city I live in). I almost feel like I could fit in with the other young people here, minus the fact that my adapter for my computer is giant and means that it is clearly visible that my computer is not Ukrainian. It rained ALL day yesterday here in K-grad. I woke up to it raining and it continued on for the whole day and is still raining again today (Monday). It makes me want to stay inside because I pretty much walk everywhere. However, Tuesday (tomorrow) is a holiday here in Ukraine (not sure what holiday...) but it means that I had today and tomorrow off. I needed to get out of my apartment, so this morning I ventured to the bazaar by my apartment and managed to check a few more things off of my list of things to purchase. Those items included a blanket (the wool blanket on my bed is incredibly itchy and too hot for right now), a full-size bath towel, and a trash can for my kitchen! Overall productive morning I would say :)

I'm going to try to Skype for the first time since leaving America! Maybe another post soon! Tootleloo!

Updated apartment pics :)

I wrote this post at home 2 nights ago with all intentions of pasting it into the blog format and hitting publish post...but that didn't work out yesterday! So, everything is written as if it were a few days ago...enjoy!

Well, I lied. I ended up staying up late last night when I finally got on a roll cleaning and putting away the last final things in my apartment…which means that you get more pictures of the way things will probably be for a little while! I am overall pretty pleased with how things have come together…considering that 1) I am in a foreign country where I cannot find things readily available (or just wouldn’t know where to purchase them to begin with!), 2) I am trying to stay on track with a small budget, and 3) the furniture I have is all I get…

So, without further ado, my {very first} apartment:

This is the view you see from the entry into the living room/my bedroom. My suitcases are underneath my bed, while most of my winter clothes are under the pull out drawer on the loveseat. (sidenote: I doused the couch in fabric refresher that I brought from home. VERY glad I brought a full size bottle with me).

Here is some more of the living room, actually standing in the doorway. The flowers I got from work on Friday which was my first real day at the job. My counterpart has pictures of me with the flowers looking nice and fresh…I’ll try to get them from her soon. It was all very sweet :)

A close-up of the corner which has 1) the blanket that came from inside my sheet duvet cover, 2) one of the two outlets in the room…the other outlet is by the cabinet with my clothes in it, 3) one of the two stools that I have no idea what to do with…the other stool is out in the entry way for me to sit on to put on my shoes, and 4) most importantly…an OU poster thanks to Mitchell’s accounting class project :)

Close-up of my shkaff (that is the Russian word for any piece of furniture that could hold items that is not a table). The bottom portion with drawers holds a random assortment of things that I might need at some point…extra toiletries, bug spray, air mattress, med kit, toilet paper, paper towels (which people do not use here…I was surprised I was able to find them to buy! I have used almost an entire roll just for cleaning…), etc. On the open bottom shelf is my stack of books/notebooks that were from PST (pre-service training). That’s a lot of reading material…

Different view of my bed and the loveseat. The entrance into the room is to the left in this picture. Amy, see if you can spot something that is an OLD, old (circa 2003) project you made me J it made the trip over here…and I’m quite glad it did. One of the first things I plan on having my parents send over is a pair of twin size t-shirt sheets. Bedding is very different here and I’ve had quite a time adjusting to it…which may seem pretty picky, but I would like to enjoy my bed for the next two years. (Sidenote: I'm about to be very whiny, so you can skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to hear…). Ukraine does not have fitted sheets, at least that I can find. This means that every night, my bottom sheet comes untucked and I end up on the “mattress” that I would rather not know how many people have slept on. So, on top of the not-fitted bottom sheet, is a top sheet duvet cover for whatever blanket you happen to be using at the time. The top sheet in this set has a giant opening at the bottom for you to slide the blanket in…which means that the blanket also moves around throughout the night and becomes very whopper-jawed. My reasoning why Ukrainians do this is to allow you to wash your sheets every week but it also keeps the blankets from getting exposed to much dust or dirt. So, I really want some of my old dorm sheets that are bright Lydia colors and that will actually stay on the bed. The end :) moving on…

I love the little nook above my bed. Very handy to keep my phone (alarm clock), journal, Bible, and Kindle in. BTW, my Kindle has 3g here in Kirovograd…definitely faster than in Oster where I had EDGE. Oh, the wonders of technology…

An overview of the entryway into my room…Ukraine map, check. Calendars, check. Pictures, check!

This montage is immediately to your left when you walk into my room. I got the two blue stick on decals from Target right before I left…$8.00. They can come off and easily be reapplied wherever. If you click on this picture too and then click to enlarge it, you might be able to see the rocking wallpaper my apartment has in it. It’s GLITTERY. I kind of love it. The OU frame is actually magnetic but I taped it up to the wall for now because I don’t have anywhere to put a magnetic frame since my fridge is outside on the balcony…the frame also has an easel back so I may put it somewhere else. Other pictures printed include one of my favorite group pictures of our cluster…the day we bought our Ukrainian cell phones. And my Ukraine fam as well :) (sidenote: Tina, I need a copy of the picture of the 5 of us at the wedding. Please please!)

Moving on to the kitchen…This is the view that you see right now when you walk into the kitchen. I can’t figure out if I will actually eat in my kitchen or not. I loved eating breakfast at the kitchen table in Oster and watching my neighbor work out in the garden, but it doesn’t feel the same here. All that I would see out my window is people walking by…a little boring compared to Oster. We’ll see. It’s a trial run right now.

It’s like an unwritten rule that you have to have candy waiting for any guest that happens to come by your house. Luckily, my host family stocked me up right before I left. Thanks, Christy :)

My dish rack that I love so much! Those are all of the dishes I have, minus a metal pan.

Kitchen sink. Purchased the sponge holder at the super market. LOVE it. One thing my host mom taught me during my 3 month stay with them was to never be afraid to use enough dish soap…and to throw away the sponge. Also pictured is my lovely retainer case…forgot to take that out for the “staging” picture :)

Here is my electric tea kettle (borrowed from work until I buy my own) and the hot plate that I used for the first time today (tried to make kasha, epic fail). The “dragon” (aka, hot water heater) is mounted on the wall.

View from the corner of the kitchen (by the stove…that doesn’t work) looking into the hallway and into the living room. I purchased the hook that the towel is on for 10 grievnas, and the towel for 6 grievnas. Towels are relatively expensive here which kind of surprises me…most of the tea towels I saw were 35 grievnas (a little over $5). While that seems normal in America, I would expect them to be less expensive here like other things, so it was kind of jarring in my mind. I brought a microfiber bath towel that I am SUPER glad I packed because my first night here there was definitely no towel in the apartment at all. And, it dries super fast. Yesterday I purchased a stick-on-the-wall paper towel holder. It is now next to my towel hook.

So that is my apartment...hope you enjoyed the tour :) love love

Apartment pics!

This post will make many people happy...because it comes with apartment pictures! Hooray :)

Disclaimer: I took these pics the first night that I was in my apartment...after I'd been on a bus for 4+ hours...so my stuff was everywhere. I have since become more settled in and will hopefully post pictures of the rearranged and decorated apartment once I get everything in order (a couple of days!).

My front door...the darker door. This is on the inside of my apartment. A lot of Ukrainian apartments have two doors like this because the inner door isn't very secure, or in my case, doesn't even shut...The corridor is behind me in the picture above, the bathroom is to my left.

The entry way/corridor...the kitchen and living room/bedroom are to your right in this picture. On down the hallway is 2 bedrooms that are junk rooms...I don't pay to use these rooms, which is fine with me because I wouldn't know what to do with them anyway!

My bathroom! Which will hopefully have a washing machine in it (wishful thinking...). The landlady put the washing machine in one of the extra bedrooms that I don't pay for...not quite sure why. Still trying to get this worked out...

The first view of the kitchen

The other part of my kitchen! The oven and stove don't work, but it comes with a digital hot plate...I have since purchased my dish rack and a few other things for my kitchen :)

First view of the living room...this has now changed since I've rearranged furniture! The wood thing is a loveseat-esque piece of furniture with a drawer that pulls out underneath it. I put my winter clothes in it for now because it's not very easy to open...

The apartment has new windows and a new door to go out on the balcony. This will be VERY nice in the winter. Through that white door is my balcony, where I will probably hang clothes to dry. My refrigerator is also on the balcony...

The green thing is my bed, which is now where the loveseat was. They swapped places. The big furniture piece in the corner is my clothes storage space. I also have some hanging spots and shelves in the corridor where I can hang dresses and coats and store extra shoes.

And as a little teaser, here is a picture of my counterpart and I at the swearing-in ceremony!

Hopefully more posts soon! :)