Doce De Abril, 2013

Friday April 12, 2013  update #420

Doce De Abril is a big holiday, Cuenca was founded by the Spanish 456 years ago today.  There are huge parties and festivals all over town but I apologize, I am not going to make it to nay of them.

I was awake at 4:30 rolling over many more ideas in my poor head and I finally just got up at 5:30 and started to act on them.  We had two more ‘missed the deadline by a mile’ Gift Certificates brought in that creates havoc with all the paperwork we were supposed to have been finished with.   It took me a while to cool down and process them because the ultimate beneficiary will be the underprivileged of Ecuador.  I think I crawled back into bed around 8:30 and just laid there, after grabbing a pain killer, until 10:30.

Bella was off to do her charity knitting and crocheting.   That giraffe she made is so darn popular that one of the Ecuadorian ladies simply insisted that the giraffe was what she was going to make today, and she was not taking No for an answer.   It didn’t matter that she didn’t have the right wool, or pattern, or stuffing….  Of course this took away from Bella’s teaching a class which did not please her too much.   Bella will have to finish a proper pattern and translate it into Spanish soon.

My next order of business was to map out everyone’s duties and responsibilities for tomorrow, to the minute.  We have a ‘Time Coordinator” assigned to keep everyone on time or we could have a shambles.   This included a breakdown for the MC’s so they know when they have to initiate things.

I finished off all the other paperwork too and decided to do a quick total of the retail value of just the Auction items.   I was more than a little surprised when that total alone came to $8,886!!  Once we add in the direct sales items we would be around the $10,000 mark!   Kudos to our volunteers who have worked so hard.

When Bella returned she wanted to go donate blood for a local lady.   She had received a note from some neighbor and then there was a posting on GringoTree or GringoPost about it too.  Since the lady is in the hospital 2.5 blocks away at the Hospital IESS I decided to go along too.  However, this being the Doce De Abril holiday, the Blood Bank was closed until Monday.

We both came home and hit the sack for another hour or so.

I never thought I would feel so much relief as when I closed the binders on all the paperwork for the Auction.  I feel in my heart that I have done everything humanly possible to manage this Auction so I hope we get a huge crowd with fat wallets tomorrow and become the talk of the town. 

There won’t be any Blog tomorrow because I will be out all day dealing with the Auction.   I will have to put it up on Sunday.

That was today’s excitement.   Hugs to all.  Please see all new photos at http://souvenircuenca.blogspot.com/