San Miguel

3 weeks into our new project, and one year older, I´m back in a small booth with kids playing gory computer games next to me. We got up early this morning to fill our new, sandy trenches with concrete, only to find that due to a power cut in the district, there was nothing we could do. We`ll have to hope that the trench walls will hold together for anothert day, or we`ll have a lot of digging to do tomorrow.
We´ staying in two houses of people from the church - 6 girls in one with Irini, and the guys next door with Maribel and Jesús. Yep, I´m living with Jesus. We´re much more cramped than we had been back in Tupac, and we only have water for one hour a day, but we´re also a lot less isolated from the community than were before. Last week I spent a whole morning with Tim talking to a neighbour, Miguel (not the eponymous Saint of his area of town, but a great guy nonetheless) who fought the Shining Path in the Peruvian jungle. Some almost unreal stories. It´s pretty cool to be living with a family, too, and Mary´s insanely speedy Spanish is great practice :) The kids are way too noisy though....
So, I last left you before our team holiday, which promised to give us a fairly comprehensive tour of the south of Perú. In fact, we spent 60 hours out of our 180 (for the slow ones among you, that´s a third) on buses. But it was definitely worth it. Our first destination, Arequipa, was a beautiful city, surrounded by snow-caps and even a volcano. From there we ventured yet higher up into the Andes, before descending the world´s second deepest canyon. True, it just looks like a really high valley, but I´m told it´s a canyon, and I´m gonna believe that. Either way, our night at a small lodge at the bottom of the deceptively named geographical feature was both incredible and very short. The stars were, due to almost zero light pollution, the clearest I´ve ever seen them; however, we were hiking again be 3.15 in the morning. To see the sun rise over the mountains from half way up one side was stunning.
After a largely uneventful trip to Bolivia, we took a boat trip out onto Lake Titicaca (which is ridiculously enormous) and visited some `floating islands´. Made entirely from roots and dried reeds, these islands continually threatened to give way under foot. Unfortunately, though, no one fell in.
Back on the outskirts of Pisco, and still within throwing distance of the Panámericana highway (which, if you follow it all the way, will take you from northern Venezuela to southern Chile) our home is now San Miguel. The work is pretty much the same as it was at the last project, but this time we´re working towards a Community Centre. More rubble to move, more ground to level, more holes to dig; this time, however, the ample available sand turns slow periods of no work into sand-castle competitions, followed by target practice with big rocks. Good times.
So, I once again hope that you are all well, and look forward to hearing from you. And thanks so much for all your birthday messages and cards (and even a present! ;D). I´ll do my best to reply to them all........