Day 4

Another beautiful day in Granon. This morning Father Jesus took me into Belarado to do the shopping. It is quite an experience having the priest push your supermarket trolley. After that we went to the butchers to buy chickens where we met a pilgrim from the previous night who insisted on paying for them as an additional donation. Barbara is cook tonight and as she is vegetarian, we are having a lentil dish, a tuna salad and melon for desert. I cooked a chicken stew and will do it again. I simply emptied tins of beans, tomatoes and what ever was around into it and everyone raved about it. It was total improvisation. I am going to try to repeat it again when its my turn tomorrow. It is quite daunting preparing a meal in this open plan lichen with 25 pilgrims watching your every move. I am on meet and greet duty this afternoon and will be responsible for the Time of Reflection at 9.30 pm in the candlelight in the choir. I haven't done it yet so I am quite nervous. It seems to be a fairly quiet day as we only have 15 pilgrims so far and it is 4pm already. We have had pilgrims arriving as late as 8pm. Just about every pilgrim is walking for some reason and often they are very emotional about. Yesterday we had an emotional American lady who is trying to wrestle with some intense personal issues. Everyday we see that this is not only a difficult physical journey for pilgrims but also an intense inner journey of the soul. I love to see families walking together. Yesterday we had an Enlist lady and her 22 year old daughter as well a Swedish lady with her two young daughters. We had a Spanish guy 2 nights ago with his 13 year old son and an Australian lady with her 17 year old son. There are lots of sisters walking together and even fathers and daughters. Later - we are now busy. It is such a glorious day pilgrims are not calling it a day early but are walking late into the afternoon. It is hard to stay put and I long to join them! Much much later - 10.45pm just finished washing pots, turned all lights off and will collapse into bed. I am on breakfast duty tomorrow so will get up at 5.50 am. We ended up with 34 pilgrims and it was like feeding the 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fishes yet lots over. Father Jesus will have to take us shopping again. We had a lovely American couple who got engaged on the Camino, a wonderful Belgian man who walked out his front door in June and will finish in 3 weeks. He shed a few tears with us as he told us his story, and lovely German mother and daughter walking together. They all tell us that this is their best experience on the Camino. The atmosphere is indescribable and Barbara, Rachel and I really learning to work together for the good of the Pilgrims. Rachel, who is 83, says she sometimes doesn't understand my accent so I have to speak slowly for her. She is the most amazing person but gets tired so Barbara and I try to relieve her of some of her chores. Otherwise she works along side of us,doing her turn at either cleaning the kitchen and sleeping mats or cleaning the bathrooms or sweeping and mopping the entire place. We have to take every precaution against bedbugs and continually disinfect everything. I will send this tomorrow after all the pilgrims leave at about 8.15 am. I wonder how many we will have tomorrow. We have been told to expect large numbers after the 8th as many start at St Jean Pied de Port and they get here 8 days later. The feeling of being so privileged to work here gets stronger each day.
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