Site Assignment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

3.24.11 CUENCA, Ecuador!

Okay, so this is a much needed update…. I apologize!! So I found out a couple of weeks ago that I will be doing my 2 year Peace Corps service in CUENCA, Ecuador in the province of Azuay and in the mountains!!!! I will be at an elevation of about 8,000ft. It is b-e-a-utiful there! So pretty! They call it the “Most beautiful place in Ecuador” and “The Paris of Ecuador.” How did I get so lucky?!??! It’s actually the 3^rd largest city in Ecuador with a population of 600,000 people. Never in a million years did I think I would be placed in a large city. It will be easy to live there for 2 years, but it will take some time figuring out exactly what I’m going/want to do for my secondary projects.

Map: Cuenca is located in the southern part of Ecuador!

I will be working with a community tourism organization. This organization works with about 30 communities within the 5 southern provinces of Ecuador. I only spent a couple days there so I am not exactly sure how it works, but I know they want me to help the communities better run their tourism businesses. When I say businesses I mean on a VERY small scale; sometimes only dealing with a single person. Right now they are also working on writing a proposal to receive a bus that they can use to travel to the different communities as well as getting permission from somewhere (not sure where) to sell brochures and packets of information for marketing the organization and the communities. I have 4 months to figure out the organization once I move there on April 21^st.

On to my new host family. They are so nice! I will have a host mother, 47, and 3 host brothers, ages 14, 25, & 27. They are all very nice.  My host mother owns a spa which includes massages, hair salon, manicures/pedicures, corset fittings, as well as, a weight loss program.  Her main focus for the weight loss program is fresh juices. She has a lady who makes up 5-8 different mixtures of juices for her every morning that she sells to her clients. She also advertises the juices every Wednesday on TV. Oh, we also have a lady that cooks and cleans the house; her name is Maria, she is very nice! And I can’t forget to mention that they have a DRYER, you know the machine and dries the clothes that come out of the wash machine? Yeah, I will have one of those in my new house. Dryers are NOT used in this country, at all. Wash machines are common in small to large cities, but no one uses a dryer, they hang their clothes outside to dry. Soooooo, yeah…… I’m going to be pretty spoiled in the new place I will call home for 3 months! J

The people at the organization (Red Pakariñan, aka La Red) are young and fun to work with! They seem pretty motivated, so that is awesome! They have a president, VP, engineer, IT guy, and a few others positions as well. My counterpart is a 26 yr old woman and is super good at helping me out. She showed me around a couple days and explained La Red, but I only caught about 40% of what she said because they talk SUPERRRRRRRR fast and my Spanish is superb on top of it. I even got lucky and the president of La Red happened to be in town one of the days I was there. I asked him all about La Red, but he was even harder to understand because he is Indigenous and I’m not used to their accents. But poco a poco (little by little) my language will come around!  Well, that’s just a brief overview of what my org is like and what they want me to do. I will fill you in on more once I figure out what my work is going to be!

But I’m sooooooo excited to be in such a beautiful place!!

Heather

P.S.-Birthday card count went up by 2 the other day :-) Thank you Erin and Mr. & Mrs. Reagan!!! I also have a package waiting for me but I won't get that until I get back from my technical trip next week! Ugh, I hate waiting!!! haha