The Wandering Librarian

Our family arrived in Cuenca, Ecuador on Monday, August the 4th and the few short days here have surpassed our expectations in major ways.

Our temporary housing was in a great location and really surpassed our expecations! Directly across from the Mercado in the barrio of 12 de Abril, we had easy access to low cost produce and prepared foods such as tortillas, bolones, and hornados (a roasted pig dish).

We selected and moved into a long term apartment and moved to the neighborhood of El Vergel. It’s a wonderful apartment with a very kind couple from the neighboring province of Canar where the people are known for their good word. They are very sweet and the wife really enjoys our little daughter. Also, we are well situated in the neighborhood. We are only two blocks from a small park with play equipment for our little girl, five minutes from the new bilingual preschool we selected, and a ten minute walk to the city’s botanical gardens. We are close to another mercado, several panaderias, grocery stores, and a drop off laundry service (yes, I am outsourcing laundry for the cost of about $6.00 per week).

Things are proceeding well with our immigration, as well. We met with our attorney’s assistant who is working our case and it appears that I can apply for my visa next week. Then, as the sponsor of my family, we will apply for my husband and daughter’s visas once I am approved. I have been having a lot of anxiety around our immigration case, so it is nice to see how things are proceeding despite several hiccups we encountered along the way. I will update later with a full post about our process of legally immigrating to Ecuador (and how it almost fell apart).