Hello all!! It's been another good week followed by a crazy weekend bender in Huacacina. My memory's been a bit hazy this week since I'm doing largely the same stuff day in day out. In fact in last week's blog I omitted the small matter of being woken up on Sunday by a 5.0 magnitude earthquake, and having to evacuate the building at 7am!! Ok here it goes then….

Tuesday 8th May 2012

Another Day at the Office!

On Tuesday morning, after a morning meeting in Spanish (that's now on Tuesdays and Thursdays now!!), I stumbled into the office where I had a good morning of sorting out receipts, giving out money to projects and sorting out our financial database. Not the most riveting way to spend the morning, but someone's gotta do it. After grabbing a quick lunch at the house, Keith took me into town in order to drop off the receipts from last month to be photocopied. After we got back, I got started on the mammoth task of sorting out the receipts from the past ten days into their correct folders, then I had a couple of hours to kill before people started coming back from work and demanding money from me!! After getting some dinner, then chatting with a few volunteers, I retired to my bed.

Wednesday 9th May 2012

The next day went down pretty similar to Tuesday. I went into town, picked up the photocopies from the day before, then went to the bank to change up some big bills for smaller stuff. After I got back, I had an hour or so of doing my thing of monotonously sorting out finances, before I went to the bakery with a couple of others to get some bread and eggs for lunch. Again with my work for the day all but done I killed a couple of hours on Facebook etc before coming back downstairs to go get the ingredients for breakfast with Fio, who I had taken an instant dislike to due to her allegiance with Universitario Lima, bitter rivals to Allianza Lima, whose shirt I happened to be wearing that day!! After running round the market we got back with an hour or so to spare before dinner, after which, exhausted with the lack of slepp during the last week and feeling a little ill, I crashed at the embarrassingly early time of 7.30pm.

Thursday 10th May 2012

The Man of Steel Returns!

On Thursday, after making breakfast and having caught up with my finance work, I decided to jump on a project. Since we were going to Aceros Arequipa (a steel mill where we go to get free wood) that day, one of my regular projects last time round, I signed up for that. After hopping in a tuk-tuk, then being crammed into a collective (a bus with a capacity of about 10, but that regularly takes maybe 18!) we arrived at the sprawling steel mill. After walking through the mill and reaching the office we had a long wait whilst the guy got back from lunch. We then got shuttled to the wood area in a pickup truck, where we started sorting out the wood. This was sweaty, dirty work and by the time the truck arrived to take the wood back to PSF, I was absolutely filthy! We were taken back to the front gate, while we waited for the truck to be weighed, and then we got some ice-cream, before we rock-paper-scissored to see who would go in the front and who would jump in the back with the precarious-looking wood. Needless to say I lost and rode in the back, and after an uncomfortable journey back, I got pulled away to sort out some payments. Still filthy and with the water out, I went with Sandy and Nena to go for a swim in the sea. Feeling a little cleaner, if a little bit salty I headed back to PSF. After dinner, with popcorn for dessert, we thought we needed a film to go with it. After a bit of deliberation we went for a Lion King sing-along! It was epic. Damn I love that film!! Soon after, I headed to bed.

Friday 11th May

The Bank Job

On Friday Morning, having given out a few big payments for materials, the money box was nearly empty, so I headed into Town to withdraw some funds. After a bit of confusion, I was able to withdraw some money from the cashier. I bought a cheap pair of sunglasses as my eyes were struggling to adjust to Peruvian sunlight, then I headed back where a big pile of receipts was awaiting me. After an hour or so of sorting them out and after a quick count up of all the money, I headed out to lunch with Shane, the biodiesel guy and KK, a nearly qualified doctor, who was interning at a small hospital in Pisco. We went to Dianas, where I had the Carapulcra that I had been craving for the last two years.

After lunch, I went down to our new wood yard, the "Bollywood Stock", where I started helping de-nail the wood we got the day before. Half an hour in though Roni, an American girl somehow roped me into helping her make her climbing wall for kids. This involved screwing in the wooden grips with an impact driver, however some of the pieces were made from rubbish wood and broke instantly, meanwhile, our carpentry skills left something to be desired and we missed a couple of our mark and put a few unwanted holes in the wall!! Nevertheless, we did a decent job and put all the available blocks on the wall, leaving me about half an hour to finish off de-nailing wood.

Friday night was very chilled, although there was a bit of entertainment as we watched Keith cut a few people's hair. For an amateur he was surprisingly good, taking quite a lot of pride in his work!! Then Jessica, a Maltese girl, got in on the act and took a pair of clippers to Sylvain's hair, which gave a decidedly less impressive Mohawk!!

Saturday 12th May

Huacacina Baby YEAHHHHH!!!!

After a late Saturday morning meeting, and after doing my usual thing of giving money away and taking in receipts, I went into town to get some drink and some kind of whacky costume for Huacacina. I got some rum and 7up and a pretty naff cowboy costume before heading back. After showering and changing we all congregated in the yard, ready for the trip. This time Jules, the project manager, had booked a "party bus", which certainly lived up to its name. After some light drinking games and some drunken singing, we started playing "truth or dare" which was kind of the theme to the weekend. In the interest of human decency I won't tell you some of the heinous things I witnessed during that time, but needless to say it was all good fun! However, at this point disaster struck. The party bus broke down in spectacular fashion, with the wheel blowing up and bringing us to a grinding halt. The driver needed to go to the next town to get a mechanic, so we decided to make the most of it and get a fire going. I knew my Boy Scout training would come in useful one day!! We had drink, bits of food and a speaker, so all in all this actually turned out to be the highlight of the trip!! After an hour and a half of fun by the roaring fire we packed up and got back onto the still quite rickety bus (they had swapped one of the two front tires) we slowly trundled along, eventually making it to the oasis resort that is Huacacina. After dropping our stuff, Keith started throwing people in the pool. Since I had a phone in my pocket he spared me, but threw my awesome cowboy hat in, so I put on my swimming shorts on and jumped in after it. After a pretty lively water wrestling game, where Jess damn near broke my neck, we headed out for dinner. I got some Chaufa (chicken fried rice) and we continued our Truth or Dare game. After settling up, we went back to the Hostel and got ready to go to the adjacent nightclub.

The place had really changed, with a new VIP area, smoking area and another bar. After a few hours on the floor I headed to bed, only to find that one of the girls had apparently passed out on my bed!! Brilliant, so I took my stuff to the other dorm and fell asleep.

Sunday 13th May

Sand, Sand Everywhere!!

On Saturday I got up and headed off to breakfast with a group that included an apologetic Saz (the girl who stole my bed!), and then after a quick dip in the pool and a walk around the lake, we headed to the lobby for some sand boarding. After a bit of a wait, we hopped in the dune buggy, and then headed off out of the town and on the rollercoaster ride that is the desert! After stopping to take pictures and then pose for an epic 10-man human pyramid, we started sand boarding. Now, on the first run I may have in hindsight rubbed a little bit too much wax into the board, thereby making me fly off, at first looking quite impressive, but then after losing my balance, went flying forward, bruising my wrist badly and almost breaking my new sunglasses. Undeterred, I picked myself up and completed the remaining slopes, before heading back to Huacacina. After a couple of drinks by the pool, the newly fixed party bus picked us up for a much more sober, sleepy ride back to Pisco.

After meeting and greeting with a handful of new volunteers, we went to Pollo Gordo, my favourite restaurant in Pisco for some chicken, then after a few drinks I decided to hit the hay.

Monday 14th May

Back to the Grind

On Monday morning Alina (A German girl) and I took the morning meeting, so after quickly scrambling around to find a quote of the day ("Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work"- Gustave Flaubert) and three Spanish words of the day, we got going. After the meeting I hit the office and started taking in everybody's weekly contributions. After I had caught up with the finances, the admin staff all had a (supposedly) weekly management meeting, where we discussed some of the projects and some of the problems we were facing, after which I headed back to the bank to pay some bills and change some dollars that a few volunteers had paid with. After having the $100 bill that Alina had given me the previous week rejected, I had to go to a street changer , who offered me 215 soles for it, way below what it was worth, so I rejected it and told Alina to get it changed later! In the afternoon I helped one of earthbag projects to build a rebar cage, which I had done a dozen times or so last time around. After dinner, I tried to get a massage off Mika, a new girl who was a professional massage therapist, but she must have got tired and gone to bed so I instead went to the common room to watch an animated movie marathon, with Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda 2 and the beginning of Toy Story 3, before I went to beddy-bye-byes!!

Tuesday 15th May

So that brings me to today, where after a pretty epic breakfast and a Spanish morning meeting, I helped out making more cages before retiring to my room to make my blog!!

So that's my week! Having an awesome time as ever, got a beer pong tournament planned for this weekend and "Africa Night" tonight, so that should be fun. See y'all next week!!