Way-Back-Wednesday #26: Happy birthday, Nora

Hello blog world :)  I've been MIA for the past month.  Sorry about that.  There are lots of reasons why, and I have been avoiding blogging to avoid having to deal with questions.  BUT, since Way-Back-Wednesday fell on one of my dear friends birthdays, it was too good an opportunity to pass up NOT to post some old school pics.  I hope to start blogging again tomorrow....with a long explanatory post. For now though, it's time to wish Miss Nora Hall a wonderful happy birthday :)

Meet Nora.  

I don't remember when I actually met Nora...sometime freshman or sophomore year of high school.  My guess is that it would have been at church.  And ever since then...we've done a lot together :)

if you need help remember the outfit I'm wearing, you can go to this post

There are so many things to comment on in this picture of Semi-Formal from sophomore year.  I'll just let y'all decide...

This picture is a precursor to the video below.  This is what my friends and I did in high school...we had dance parties at each others houses.  You think I'm joking...

but I'm not.

Rose, Jace, Anna, Amy, Lydia, Nora

Row, row, row your boat...

Nora, Rose, Lydia, Anna

North vs. High football. Amy, Lydia, Nora

Just hanging out in Seattle on the Space Needle

Anna, Nora, Lydia

Mission trip to Camden, NJ

Tayler, Gracie, Lydia, Nora

Mexico one year...note my shirt and Nora's bandana

Mexico the next year...note my shirt and Nora's bandana. 

Niagara Falls.  NBD.

Hanging out in Toronto

Brycey, Nora, Pirtle, Lydia

Mount Rushmore

Tayler, Kendall, Lydia, Nora

Club 69er--aka TLC.  

Just another fun time in a McFarlin mini-bus.

Glacier National Park in Canada

painting in Montana

Dress-up time with Nora and Rosebud

When I came back to the states, Nora was one of the people that I surprised.  I scheduled a "Skype date" with her even though we wouldn't really be skyping.  Instead, I rang her doorbell just as she was supposed to be signing on to Skype.  After many persistent knocks and doorbell rings {while she was sneaking around the house trying to see who was at her door}, she finally answered :)  Nora, I hope your birthday is filled with lots of fun times and laughs.  Love you dearly :)

Peace Corps Mali

Privyet blog readers! Sorry I've been lacking lately.  Lots-o-stuff going on.  But, I did see from one of my fellow PCV Ukraine friends that Peace Corps Mali was recently shut down.  It really hit home with me as I began combing PCV blogs of volunteers in Mali and read their personal stories of playing the waiting game: finding out what was going to happen to them.

Mali is currently undergoing a coup d'etat (a sudden overthrow of the government).  Often times, I live in my own little world here in Ukraine not looking at news.  Horrible, I know; it's true though.  So, as I lay in bed last night {unable to go to sleep}, my heart went out to each one of those volunteers whose life is now forever changed {in a very abrupt manner}.

These are a few blog posts I read that truly touched me and made me think about my past year in Ukraine...and what I would do if something were to happen and cause us to have to leave so abruptly.

A good overview of the situation: here
Summary of a PCVs timeline & how PC handled everything:  here
An overview of a PCVs entire time {summed up in 3 entries} in Mali: here
Saying goodbye: here

One of the first things some of these posts made me think of is how utterly spoiled I am.  Yes, I signed up for PC.  But, we sometimes refer to Peace Corps Ukraine as Posh Corps Ukraine.  It's not Africa.  It's not South America.  It's not Asia.  Yes, we have our own trials here, but still.  I'm not faced with 115 degree temps where I have to fetch my own water {although the -25F temps we experienced kind of make up for it a little...}.  I have a giant supermarket about 100 yards from my front door.  I have incredibly fast internet.  I don't sleep under a mosquito net.  I have a washing machine {or a washing agitator as it should more properly be called}.  I live an incredibly comfortable life with hot water and a flushing indoor toilet.  But, if push came to shove, I was willing to go wherever Peace Corps wanted me.  I knew in my heart it would be Ukraine and I was right.  I knew 8 years ago that I would come back to this country I grew to love.

One of the other things that fascinated me reading some of those blogs is how utterly different our Peace Corps experiences are.  Even here in Ukraine, my youth development work is completely different from one of my friends youth development work in a village.  In Mali, the volunteers met under a tree for 8 hours of language lessons every day.  In Ukraine, we plastered the walls of our teacher's apartment from floor to ceiling in verb charts, conjugations, vocabulary, etc. I wonder...in Mali, did they use verb charts and tape them to their tree each day? :)  Seriously.  Our experiences are so{ooo} different.

My thoughts and prayers go out to those volunteers and their communities they left so suddenly behind.  I can't imagine the emotions that every one of them is going through.  Jessica made a great summary, that I'll end with:

"The people of Mali are kind, silly, respectful, patient. They hate conflict, break into dance when they hear music, are afraid of toads, and laugh and smile no matter how terrible their teeth are. Sometimes their children have the startling wisdom of grown-ups, and their grown-ups have the infectious spirit of children. There certainly have been times when I longed for America. Here, their methods are outdated, their food is monotonous, their transport is literally hell on a set of wheels, and their 9 month-long heat wave makes you wish for death at times. But some things are unique to and only to Mali. What is happening right now is unfair to the people of Mali. They deserve a non-corrupt government, they deserve opportunities, they deserve peace. They don't deserve this. Please hope for the best for Mali."

Sending lots of love and happy thoughts to Mali.  And almost Happy American Easter :)
Love love, Lyd

Ski Trip to Slavske {part 1}

I am almost 100% better.  Not quite, but almost :)  It seems that either my stomach has forgotten how to be hungry (hmmm, I highly doubt it...) or is still a bit queasy because not a whole lot of foods sounds great right now.  But, nonetheless, I wanted to begin blogging about the ski trip while it was fresh on my mind.  

Like any good trip in Ukraine, traveling to Slavske meant an overnight train ride.  Slavske is located in the far west part of Ukraine in the Carpathian mountains.  The trip was completely worth it, even if it meant being sick for a week once I got home.  

Traveling with me on the train were my new{ish} sitemates (and sweet married couple) Dan and Vicki.  I am so, so glad that they got put in Kirovograd with me and will be in Ukraine throughout the rest of my service :)  Dan is more OCD about things than I am sometimes (hard to believe, huh?) and one of his OCD habits is baking a perfect chocolate chip cookie.  I feel like I'll do a blog post {eventually} dedicated solely to his CCC's, but for now, just know that they're greeeeeeeat! (like Tony the tiger would say).  I tease Dan about his CCC's but am secretly jealous because I still have yet to get my CCC's baked to perfection.

Dan, sitting out in the hallway of the train on a jump-seat

It just so happened to be Dan and Vicki's first time on the train...which meant that I wanted them to have a good impression of train travel in Ukraine.  We opted for kupe seating (2nd class) which worked out perfectly because there were 4 of us in our little cabin :)

Vicki and myself eating CCC's with milk.  Perfection.

Who was the fourth roomie in our little bunk?  None other than one of my bffs, Miss Kym Starno.

Kymmy poo and Dan, dunkin' away

Our humble abode{s} while in Slavske were pretty much awesome.  Around 40 PCVs met up which meant we needed two mountain cabins to house all of us.

The house that I stayed in, with their big doggie, Rex, outside.

Unpacking in our own room :)

Dan and Vicki's room

That's all for part 1 of our shooping adventure!!  More soon :)

The many different lives of PCVs...

I've found that some of my best times of brainstorming future blog entries comes at inopportune times. Sometimes I'll make a note on my phone, or try to ingrain the idea in my brain, but it usually never comes to fruition.  As I was just cleaning up my kitchen, a topic flickered through my head.  I finished doing the dishes and decided to sit down right now and type it up.  I'm also {highly} procrastinating going out to run errands like I need to.

Late last night as I lay in bed (quite bored out of my mind), I decided to sign onto facebook chat.  I never use fb chat but decided to see if anyone was online.  One of my sweet high schoolers (Rachel) messaged me and even said, "Whoah! You're on facebook chat?!"  Ha.  See...I never get on that thing!  But as I looked through the people online...lo and behold, my favorite curly red-head was on!  I couldn't believe it.  The red-head I'm talking about is Mr. Darren Downing Gore. 

One of my last nights in Norman before leaving for the PC...

I met Darren when I moved to Oklahoma in 2001 and no matter the distance between us, I can always count on a good chat (and a good laugh) when I talk to him.  He has a rather hectic schedule right now because he is going to Physician Assistant school at Baylor and going through rotation's at the moment.  So, I was super excited to see him online at a time where we could both chat for a minute.  Turns out he never uses facebook chat either, so was it pure coincidence we both happened to be online at the same time?  I think not.  Somebody up above was looking out for us :)

I wasn't planning on making this a picture montage, but Darren and I have been on many an outing together and well, some of these pics are just too good not to be posted.  This is totally not the direction the blog post was supposed to go today, but I'll get to the point in a minute!  Let's call this a decade of Darren, shall we?

Probably gonna kill me for some of these, but I'm 5500 miles away, so he can't do very much :)

Darren, David, and Mark--circa 2001 BASIC retreat 

Anna, Darren, Lydia--circa 2002 choir tour to Florida

bored on the charter bus...who knew that a person could fit in the overhead compartments?

Yep, he'll definitely be mad about this one.  This was sometime during high school at youth one night. 

Dinner theater 2005--Darren, Karen, Lydia, Swenson

Prom 2005--Bert, Lydia, Amy, Karen, Anna, Rose, Darren

Graduation 2005--Darren, Rose, Amy, Lydia, Kevin (Darren's brother-in-law!), Anna, Swenny

Choir Tour to Disneyland--2005

Disneyland 2005--Darren and all of his girls :)

 

Mission trip to Seattle--summer 2005

Lady Liberty, Darren, and myself--summer 2006

 

Birthday celebrations--2007

Tacky Christmas Party 2007

Opies Reunion--2008

Happy New Year!  Love Amy cheesin' in the background--2008/2009

Mexico 2010

My hot date to Jacey's wedding--2010

And last but not least, he came to surprise me at my going away party...we're both doing the "Darren smile" :)

So, that photo montage was completely off subject, but I had fun finding all of those pictures on my external hard-drive and on my laptop.  Back to the topic of my chat with Darren!

Darren has a friend from college (Katie) who happened to leave for the Peace Corps about a month or two before I left.  She is currently serving in Tanzania, Africa, as a teacher!  The story for how I came across the fact that Katie was leaving for the Peace Corps is somewhat creepy (or really creepy as Darren would inform me).  I went to post something on Darren's wall in early 2011.  Katie had just written a note on his wall informing him of her blog and that he could follow her service through that.  She didn't mention the PC once in that post, but the lingo was some of the same PC lingo that is used worldwide.  I found her blog and facebooked her...never having met this girl.  Okay, okay...kinda creepy on my behalf.  BUT, I love reading about her adventures in Tanzania and thinking how utterly different every PC experience is.  

Katie must have a sense of humor very similar to Darren's because anytime she posts something on facebook, I typically laugh (or gasp if it has to do with an African animal encounter in her house...).  One of her more recent posts on facebook said: "not too happy about this bat that has taken up residence in my pit latrine...".  Wow.  She's fighting a bat in her "toilet," while I'm fighting to keep my apartment semi-warm with temps still in the negatives.  

You can find Katie's blog here, with the most recent post detailing a snake encounter in her house.  Oh, Ukraine...I'll take your cold weather any day over the bugs and animals of Africa :)

Darren is probably shaking his head at the fact that I would post all of this, and I hope Katie isn't too weirded out since I have never actually met her.  BUT, what else could I write about on a Sunday afternoon?  Congratulations if you read all the way to the bottom.  Молодец!  Or good job... :)

Way-Back-Wednesday #17: Happy Birthday, Kym!

Today's Way-Back-Wednesday post doesn't go too far back because every picture available for today's post only comes from my time in Ukraine!  However, there are definitely some good pictures and stories to tell with the photo montage.

Meet Kym. 

also known as Kira, Ken, Kim, and a slew of other names. My fave: Kymmy Gibbler.

Kym Starno, one of my bestest friends in the PC, was in the training village next to mine.  I will never forget the first time my cluster group met her cluster group.  We had probably been in country a week and a half.  The Kozelets group (Kym's cluster) was coming to our village that day for a lesson.  As we sat in our teacher's apartment with the windows open, we heard a very strange noise slowly getting louder and louder.  Turns out the noise was coming from four incredibly loud and boisterous girls and their lone guy of the group, Matt.

The Kozelets group: Kym, Anne, Mary-Kathryn, Matt, and Maria in the front

I thought I wrote a blog entry about "how sweet the Kozelets group was" but I couldn't find it just now.  If I did in fact write one of those entries, at the time I was probably lying.  The first session that we were all together I didn't say one word the entire hour.  They were so overwhelming and so completely polar opposite my training cluster.  I can remember letting out my breath after they left that day wondering what the next few months would be like.  If someone had told me then that some of the Koz. group members would be some of my sweetest and closest friends, I would have laughed in their face.  But, I'm lucky to call them friends now :)  They are quite the bunch, that's for sure.

Back to Kym's birthday photo montage.  I have more awkward and embarrassing pictures of Kym and myself from ALL over Ukraine and Eastern Europe too.  I think I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.  

First time in the Black Sea together--Odessa, summer 2011

Alien night at Camp Bereg, summer 2011

Kym, Lydia, Theo

Second time in the Black Sea together--Camp Bereg in Sergiivka, summer 2011

PEPFAR (HIV/AIDS) training w/some of our clustermates, September 2011

Kym, Jamie, Lydia, Mark, Maria

Sight-seeing in Kamyanets Podilsky, September 2011

EuroTrip with my work, Dresden, October 2011

Hello Kitty earmuffs.  Eurotrip, October 2011

Squash in Kym's apartment hallway, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving 2011!  There is so much that I love about this picture.  Words can't even explain it...Kym, Lydia, Matt, Mary-Kathryn

doing my "special" make-up on my birthday, December 2011

My New Years work party, December 2011

Olena, Lydia, Kym, Mary-Kathryn

Happy New Years!!! Celebrating in Kiev...2011/2012!

Matt, Kym, Lydia

Words can't describe the relationship I have with Kym.  She is the best travel buddy ever (she brings half the toiletries, and I bring the other half!), she has the most gung-ho attitude where nothing is impossible, and she can literally make me laugh uncontrollably just by being herself.  I feel like I've known her my entire life.  You are a blessing in my life and I hope you've had a happy, happy birthday :) love you Kymmy Gibbler!