Bonjour!!! Wait that's not right... Anyway welcome to part 6 of my blog about my work and fun in Pisco, Peru. Have had a truly excellent past few days, can't wait to tell you all about it!

Just Another Manic Monday!
So I did my last blog on Monday evening, shortly after which I remembered that I had arranged to go round to Michael's house for dinner. This had been postponed on Saturday, so we were a little reluctant to go in case we weren't completely welcome. After ringing him up we decided to go because his wife had already prepared food and it now seemed rude not to. He picked us up at about 7 o'clock, then headed over to his place. The house was pretty nice and I was suprised to find that he had a Nintendo Wii, a laptop and a digital camera, because I was so used to the poverty stricken areas of Pisco where nobody can afford such luxuries. We had a beef dish served with rice and vegetables which was pretty good, then we had the cake that we had brought. They were impressed by the Spanish I cobbled together, however Michael's friend Rudolfo who could speak English fairly well had to do a bit of translating! Michael told us about his experiences with the earthquake that happened three years ago and how it has affected his life. After a few beers that Michael had kindly provided for us we headed home. He also gave us some Aceros Arequipa T-shirts and an AA bottle opener, which was really touching.
The next day I decided to head back to Ludoteca to help out with the day care centre there. In the morning it was really quiet, so much so that we spent the first half an hour or so playing Jenga! After a few hours of playing football and tennis with the kids it was time to pack up for lunch. I grabbed some snacks from the gas station and after an hour or so of relaxing at the house I headed back to Ludoteca. The afternoon was exhausting. Twice as many kids came this time, including one hyperactive child who would just not leave me alone. I left the place feeling so worn down that I dreaded the prospect of our weekly football game against the tour guides. Suffice to say we didn't do so well this week and got thoroughly thrashed! When I got back celebrations had begun for Anton's birthday. Some peopled had bought him a cake, which we all had a slice of, and a pinata, which Anton smashed with a plastic pipe! After some whiskey and cigars (well technically a cigar!) we headedback to the Pisco Sour Bar. I bought Anton a Pisco sour, then had a couple of games of tabled football at the fair-type-thing that was going on behind the building. We then went to Afro-cafe, but after I realised that Anton the birthday boy hadn't joined us I headed home.

Come on you England!!
After the late night on Tuesday I slept in on Wednesday morning, only to be awoken by my roommate Marcus, telling me that the football match was starting in 10 minutes. I quickly hurried down to the gas station where everybody was watching the match. I was pretty relieved when Defoe knocked in the goal, and you could feel the tension in the room lifted! With the win secured, I headed to the internet cafe to check my emails and generally burn some time until the afternoon match between Germany and Ghana.

Extreme Makeover Home Edition: Pisco
When I headed back to the house to get ready to watch the match, I bumped into Milan, who was heading over to the modular house project. This was a really special project, where an entire wooden house was erected for a family in less than a week whilst the woman was away. Today was the big unveiling, so I decided to tag along. The house was in a pretty poor neighborhood, but the house itself was really great. It had three rooms, with a double bed, bunk bed, cot, cooking area and three table (all made by us) as well as a dog house, which I can claim to have had a small hand in making. After a short wait Thays, the project manager went to fetch the woman. We all greeted her with a cry of "sopresa!!!!" at which point she burst into tears. After a while of stunned silence, she was ushered in to take a look at the house. She saw the different rooms and cried some more. After composing herself she said some truly kind words about PSF and our work in the community. This was a real tug on the heart strings, and almost all of the watching voluteers were reduced to tears. The rest of the family also gave empassioned speeches, and the little boy even sang us a song. Jimmy, the leader of this project also gave a moving speech, thanking everyone for their hard work. After rounds of hugs and kisses and a few more tears shed I headed out. This was a really powerful, emotional experience and I feel I have hardly done it justice in this blog, but it really hit home the importance of the work that we were doing here in Pisco.
By this point I was starving, so I headed to the gas station to grab some food and watch the remainder of the football match. After this I decided to help sort wood at the wood yard, but sadly after about 15 minutes of work we were done, so I headed back to the house. For the rest of the afternoon I had a go at learning a bit more Spanish, culminating in me trying to read a Peruvian book. My choice of book was poor though as it was really obscure and abstract, so I gave up a few pages in.

Eye of the Tiger!
After dinner I settled by the fire and talked with some friends until late. I was about to go to bed when talk started brewing about a boxing match taking place. This was a long awaited bout between TBC, the Director of PSF; a skinny first time boxer, and Jason, a professional boxing coach who is built like a pile of bricks!! TBC would only fight if 1000 soles (about £250) was raised for PSF. After a while of chipping bits of money in, Jimmy, who's last night it was went online and donated the remainder. This done we headed to the common room and started preparing for a fight. The first round was pretty funny, with Jason just guarding while TBC threw timid, weak punches at him. Jason finally snapped and caught TBC with a big combo, cutting TBC's lip and sending him to the floor!! At this point the bell went for the end of the round. There was a funny moment in the second round when Jason realised that all these punches that he was letting TBC make meant that he was getting out-pointed, leading to him unleashing another fury of punches, again sending TBC to the floor. In the fourth round TBC caught Jason with a puny punch that Jason, toying with TBC pretended knocked him down. This went from funny to funnier when after being counted up to 9, Jason got up, only for TBC to sucker punch him straight after getting to his feet!! The fight finished at the end of round four, after which three judges conviened and eventually gave the fight to Jason. With the action over I headed to bed.

On Thursday morning I signed up to work on the wood yard, however I got moved to another project after no-one signed up for it. It was another house, quite near to the town centre. The place belonged to Maria, and older woman living with one of her daughters, along with a load of tiny puppies and an even tinier cat! We were charged with digging foundations, which had already been started, albeit really poorly, with two of the trenches not lining up and none being anywhere near deep enough. To make matters worse I was constantly being harrassed by the 14 year old daughter and her friend, who were deciding who they liked best out of me and Miles, the other guy on the project. The mother then joined in, leading to an extremely uncomfortable dinner where I knew that they were talking about me, but I couldn't quite make out what they were saying!! In the afternoon we had dug pretty deep and the soil started becoming really clay-like, which was a nightmare to shovel. After a nightmare few hours of hard labour and funny looks from the girls we called it a day. There was a bit of confusion when the daughter came back with us. I assumed that they needed to talk to Thays, but it turned out that they were just being polite. We had to wait for the mother, who had taken a different tuk-tuk back, but after an hour of waiting we just hopped in a tuk-tuk and took her back.

So yeah, that was my week so far!! Really enjoyed it, especially the Extreme makeover and the boxing . Gonna put some photos up, if you're reading this from another site you can see them at www.offexploring.com/tom-janes/photos. There is talk of going back to Huacachina at the weekend, which I may well partake in, especially since we can watch England beat zee Germans there!! Will maybe do another blog on Sunday or Monday, until then Au revoir!!!

Tom x