Yuma!!!

Hello everyone!!

I've been in Yuma now for 3 full days, and I never would have imagined what a neat city this is!! Honestly, everyone on my team is surprised. Yuma definitely has the stereotype of just being a "desert town' that is just too hot and nobody wants to go to. But it's a really neat town with lots of cool stuff to do. Yes, it's hot. But the local people here talk about getting acclamated and everything and then it's fine. It's mostly a dry heat, except for like 2 months of the year--July and August. Basically, they suffer through 2 months of "hell" for 10 months of paradise. I'm not sure if I consider it paradise yet...it pretty much is going to get to the triple digits for the entire time we're here, and anytime I go outside I want to jump into a pool--but I'm getting used to it :) Another thing I love is that it's definitely a city, big enough to have everything you need...but it definitely still has a small town feel, which amazes me because the populations is almost 90 times Fort Recovery's!

So far we've had a tour of the city along with a lot of safety training. And yesterday we started the outdoor work bright and early at 5 am! Yikes! But this way, we were off between 1 and 2...which is when the hotteset part of the day really starts. Lucky for us, the area we're working in is right next to the riverbank beach thingy! It's the colorado river, and I've already been in it twice! And there's a nice sandy beach and everything..it's wonderful! Also, after memorial day we'll be able to go to the aquatic center after work as well, so there are plenty of ways to keep cool.

The objective of this project was kind of hazy for a little while, but I think I got the idea now. There's an old "downtown" part of Yuma that at one time was very popular and very attractive, and it's kind of died down...other malls have gone up, the city has grown, and the cute, quaint downtown area suffered--now the buildings are run down and have paint peeling off of them. Apparently, at some point a long time ago, the city decided to buy the canopies of all the buildings on the downtown strip. Anything protruding from the face of the building that provides shade is now owned by the city. So, we're working for the City of Yuma/Parks and Rec to help fix up these canopies a bit. Hopefully, a little life and a little color will help bring people back into the area. The first business we started on is a fitness center...it has a huge canopy with huge pillars, and were painting it blue and tan..honestly, I think it's going to look pretty neat! So far they have 12 businesses lined up for us, but we may get even more than that. I wasn't sure how much it would actually help, but even after one day I can see that this is going to be beneficial. While we were working, we had so many people come up to us and thank us. For the most part the city is pretty aware of us and what we're doing here, which is neat. The city council people think we are just amazing, and have really tried to spread that word about us and hook us up with neat things. Apparently they were supposed to get a team last year, but the team got pulled to work on disaster, so they've literally been waiting on us for a year! We have various businesses that have offered to feed us breakfast or lunch on a given day, and yesterday a sweet old man invited us across the street to his restauarant called "Lutes Casino" and gave us all free pops. I think people take pity on us when they see us working out in this heat! We don't mind though :)

For example, we're getting free passes to the Aquatic Center when it opens, on June 1st we're going on a kayaking trip down the Colorado River, we've already received a free tour of the Historic Yuma Territorial Prison, we might get to set up a tubing trip down the river, and we can schedule anytime an archery lesson. Oh, and if we want we can golf for free at the golf course we live right next to. Pretty sweet, huh? And honestly, we're thinking that more opportunities will probably arise..the people here are pretty wonderful. I think Yuma is definitely a secret that people don't know about.

As you can probably tell, I'm pretty excited about being here. I'm thankful that we're in such a welcoming community, and I know it's going to be hard to leave. This is a split project, so we're only here like 4 more weeks and then it's off to Flagstaff. We'll just have to get as much as we can done while we're here!! Hope everything is wonderful at home:)

xoxo
Abby