Support, Service, School, Solo, Spain

Why hello friends of mine. It's been a while since I posted last, but I really don't have too much to fill you in on. My life is pretty chill to say the least. I've been keeping myself busy with work, walks, skype, cooking, sleeping, and a lot of episodes of The Office.

Here's a brief update on my life. As of today, I have been outside of the US for exactly 3 months; I've been in Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine for 9 days; and I started my new job 4 days ago. Things have been going pretty smoothly. I took the first couple of days to find an apartment. While the apt-hunt was underway, I stayed with my boss' family. They were super sweet to house me and drive me around everywhere I needed to go. I'm very thankful for them and all their support! I also got pretty close to their 12-year-old daughter named Katya. She's AWESOME and a huge blessing in my life. I will actually be staying with her for a few days while her parents are out of town. I'm excited for some fun girls-nights :).

In addition to the huge blessing of my boss' family, I also got the pleasure of meeting an older missionary couple from Canada. After some small talk about Alaska, they lent me some cook wear, bedding, and some other random things I needed for my apartment. This would be Huge-Blessing-#2. I'm excited to get to know them more and see a little of what their ministry looks like here.

As for my job/service project, I'm starting to put together a questionnaire for a marketing focus group here in Ukraine. HOPE is "hoping" to find out what kind of items their clients would purchase if given small consumer loans. These loans would be for home-appliances or other personal use items. They are hoping to market the new consumer loan products in order to get more clients. I'll be testing some of these ideas. My boss also told me about another project we will be starting soon. We will be making a client catalog. So our clients can buy products they need from other HOPE clients. It will specifically be targeting clients that are having trouble paying back their loans. For example: Client A sells towels. Client A also can't pay back his loan. If he sells his merchandise, towels, he will then be able to use this money to pay back the loan. So, Client B comes into the office and says, "I need a new towel." If Client B buys it from Client A after seeing it in the catalog, then Client A will have more income to pay his loan back. Not only does it help Client A, but also...1)helps the MFI (microfinance institution) get their money; 2)it helps the individual loan officers PAR %(portfolio at risk - which is the % of clients per loan officer that aren't paying back their loans on time). If their PAR % decreases then their salary increases; 3) and it also helps our clients advertise their products. In the future, we hope for all this to be done by shopping online and develop some kind of delivery procedure for all our clients.

Other than that, school starts tomorrow at NWC, and I too will have to start my Advanced Accounting class. It will be interesting to see how my study habits get better or worse while being outside the classroom setting. With this said, it's hard for me not to be back at NWC. I've been pretty successful keeping myself busy so that I don't get too homesick. I'll try to keep this up until I acquire some kind of life here in Zap-town. I still feel like I'm in transition after leaving Moldova. I have to be honest and say that I have very little friends here. My Russian is not good enough to have conversations with strangers, let alone build a relationship. I've met very little people that actually speak English. Some days I go the whole day without taking to someone here (and we all know how strange this is for me...bah!) I'm trying to stay positive through everything and looking at this time as one big "solo" trip. Trying to get the most out of living with myself and seeing what God has for me personally. It's funny how we get so wrapped up in what everyone else is doing that we don't have time to listen to what God is trying to tell us. That describes my life perfectly the last couple of years - being so busy that I have very little time to sit and reflect on the small things of life. I think I'm learning more than I can understand right now.

In another month, I will be taking a vacation. I'll be heading to Western Europe with my dad! I'm so excited for the trip. We've been planning the trip for a while now...okay, so he's mainly the one that's been planning it ;). We will be going to Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and where ever else we decide to go when we get there. I'm really looking forward to seeing a familiar face and to have the ultimate father-daughter experience. If anyone has any contacts where we can stay feel free to e-mail me!

There's my life in a nut-shell. I hope you enjoy reading about it, because I enjoy living it.
I miss you all...A LOT!

Apartment pictures are up in case you're interested! http://bobbielydick.shutterfly.com/