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Hallo there and welcome to my penultimate blog entry!! Coming home on the 1st October so will be back in the land of hope and glory in less than one week!! Had another awesome week, including the free wood day I put in a special entry a couple of days ago.
The Beach Boys
On Sunday we went for a trip to Paracas beach. So we all got in a bus and set off. An hour later we arrived at the nice secluded part of the Paracas National Park. It was a pretty small beach but the water was beautiful (if not still cold) and there were some awesome views. We enjoyed a day of swimming, drinking and playing games. There was a little rock island 20 metres or so from the beach, which a few of us swam to and proceeded to bomb off! We called it a day at 4.30pm and headed home. On the way back we had a bit of a drunken sing-song before arriving back at the house. On the evening I headed back to the school house with a couple others to watch a movie before heading to bed.
On Monday I returned to Guillermo's house for a bit of metal cage making. This was to be used for making columns. It was only me and Amiria, my fellow school-houser on this day, but with the help of the Maestro, Alex and Guillerno's son, Brian we got 7 of the 8 cages done as well as the metal grids that the cages sit upon. On Monday evening we sat by the fire whilst Amiria and Paolo (one of our Peruvian volunteers) tried played a bit of guitar. After a few drinks I hit the hay.
First day on Admin!
On Tuesday I was put on the board as "admin" in order to organise the aforementioned free wood day. I had a few things to get through. First of all I asked Faviola, the lady who owns the cake shop next to the lot we were hoping to use about the availability of the lot. She was very helpful and talked to the head of the local council for me. Next I headed to the wood yard to take stock of the wood that we had and to fish out wood to make my "Madera Gratis" (free wood) sign. After enquiring to Alex, the tools manager about the availability of paint and paintbrushes to paint the sign, it seemed that there were no brushes because people had not been washing them properly. A quick tuk-tuk ride into town later I obtained a brush for the bargain price of s/.3.50 (about a quid!). I then set about painting the board I had found white before letting it set. After getting the go ahead from cake lady, I then set about making flyers to advertise the day. After struggling with my written Spanish, I got Carolina, our Peruvian household manager to help me. A few minutes later I headed over to the gas station to start typing them up and printing them off. I then went around some nearby places to put the flyers up. My final job of the day was to finish off my sign, by painting "Madera Gratis" on it and nailing some planks to it.
As Usual on Tuesday we had our weekly football game, which this time we managed to win by a convincing 7-1 scoreline. I headed back to get showered and watch tv before bedtime!
On Wednesay I headed another visit to Aceros Arequipa, this time with the promise of two trucks. This was brilliant because we could get both the useful wood and tarps as well as some rubbish wood for the free wood day. After getting there we split up into two groups, one to go to the big metal cage to sort through palletes and planks, and another group sorting through a big pile of wood. I was in the pallete group, so we went about sorting and loading palletes. Afterwards we headed over to the other group's area to collect some tarps before I hopped in the truck back to PSF. I organised a few people kicking round the yard to unload the wood from the first truck before the rest of my team returned along with the other truck. In the end we had a massive pile of give-away wood as well as a fair amount of good wood and tarps. After a late finish, we headed to Diana's for lunch. Later on, having decided to do breakfast the following morning, I went to the supermarket to get ingredients for my usual french toast. A load of drama ensued as first of all the electricity in all the town went out, except in one supermarket, which turned out to not have any bread loaves left. After a literally fruitless trip to the market, we went back to the supermarket to buy ingredients for an alternate breakfast of fried eggs and guacamole. By the time we had finished, the lights were back on and we had money left in the budget for bread and honey to make french toast!
As soon as I got back a bunch of people were getting ready to go and play basketball with one of Amiria's Peruvian friends and a bunch of other Pisqueñans. We got there at 8.30pm and played four first-to-five games, which we managed to lose all of!! Wednesday was also Carolina's birthday as well as Pete's last night, so after getting back from basketball we all headed out to the karaoke bar for some drinking, dancing and singing!!
Thursday was my big day, after making my breakfast (to much critical acclaim!) I started excecuting my free wood day. Read my other post for more details on that one!! After the free wood day, I went to type up my report and took down all my flyers. Feeling exhausted from getting little sleep and the exertion of free wood day, I went to sleep at the embarrassingly early time of 7 o'clock!
On Friday I signed up to do pallete breaking and modular panel making, with the idea of doing paletes in the morning and panels in the afternoon, however the girls that I was working with and I had such a good time gossiping and telling jokes we stayed on for the rest of the day. On the evening I threw a party at the school house for my last weekend at PSF. We started by the fire, before getting some dancing going, then finishing the night off on the school house roof.
On Saturday I signed up to do a concrete pour at Guillermo's house, however they didn't have any wood, so we just spent the morning moving rubble. Afterwards I went into town to get a football t-shirt for the Alianza Lima vs Lima University football match that I'm about to go and watch!!
So there we have it, another action packed week. Was up there as one of my favourite weeks volunteering here, there are some awesome people here now who I'm going to be really sad to leave! Will see some of you next week I'm sure!! Hasta luego!!
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