Holiday week at PSF

Volunteers hanging out in the plaza on a Sunday.

PSF has been nothing short of amazing these last 5 weeks. We have been pouring a lot of concrete and digging a lot of trenches. Two weeks ago, there was a group of us that went to a part of Pisco called Centro Pablado to dig some trenches. It involved smashing concrete and digging meter and a half deep holes connected with 2 foot deep trenches. That was a 2 day mission, so on day 3 we poured concrete to fill the lovely holes that we worked so hard to dig.

Ivan looks at what jobs need to be filled for the day.

Some good looking trenches.

Ollie and I made a brick wall out of some good looking trenches.

Just last week, two of us went back to continue with the project that is to be a bathroom and kitchen when finished; so we poured a bit of concrete and built a brick wall. It is so neat to see a project come so far in such a short time and to be able to be part of the transformation. All of this hands on work has made me start to seriously consider going into trades when I get back to Canada.

The holiday week started last Monday. It was a local fisherman holiday, so in respect we did not work that day and instead went to a small town just sout of Pisco called San Andres. There they had pisco and wine tasting, plenty of street vendors with churros, unidentified meat, ceviche and more, and for the kids a mini fair. Also, there were dozens of foosball tables set up for un sol games.

Fishermans day in San Andres.

Felipe, Billy, Andy and Jake playing foos.

Last week was also the beginning of July, as you know, so there was a wee celebration for Canada day and a big party for the 4th of July. On July 1st, there were only myself and Dominic (who emigrated from Hungary 10 years ago), which was nothing compared to how many Americans were part of PSF. In any case, we sang our national anthem at breakfast, raised the flag to wave wonderfully in the wind, went to work and then proceeded to have a little shin dig in the evening. It was good times for sure.

Getting ready for work on Canada Day.

Beach soccer wraps up on Pisco Playa.

July 2nd was the unofficial Mexican day, so we celebrated by having delicious Mexican food. Friday we followed up with another wonderful meal of pizza (in a brick oven) and BBQ kabobs & chorizos. This was all just a warm up for Saturday to come.
Being the north american summer, we have been getting huge numbers of people coming through for a couple of days to a few weeks to help out. With the high turnover of volunteers, things can tend to get pretty dirty, especially with the kind of reconstruction we do in Pisco. Most Saturday jobs were cancelled not because of Independance Day, but because we were meant to do a mass clean of the PSF houses. In our "nice" dorm, we found mice poop, old moldy clothes, some unidentifiable food and to top it off a scorpion! When Jen (project mangager) found this out, she made sure we had properly cleaning equipment and went at it for the day.
Later that evening, a homemade American flag was hoisted, the national anthem was sung and the party started. There was plenty of delicious chocolate based food, beer, fruit cocktails and we even had a fireworks display. It was another good time to wrap up the holiday week at PSF.
Sunday was a lazy day for most, with some more clean up and hanging out. I was meant to leave for Lima that day, but the thing with PSF is that it is much easier to just not leave, so I didn´t...until Monday.
I came here for a few reasons. Number one was to get some surf time in. In addition to that, I felt I needed a break from all the people there and need to start sorting out my last 2 months. I will probably return to Pisco this weekend if I don´t end up heading back to Northern Peru for some serious surfing. Depends if I have someone to go with I think.
That is the update for now. Thanks for reading!