Day 6

We have a duty roster each day which we rotate. 2 get up at 5 50 am to do breakfast and the third hospitalero can sleep in but always emerges by 6.45 am to say goodbye to our pilgrims who are by now our friends. The last pilgrims normally leave by 8.15 am when the cleaning begins. With a large group there is more work because the small chapel is opened up as an extra dormitory. One of us sweeps the entire place and mops all floors. The other cleans the kitchen which takes a long while even though it is tiny. She also has to wash and disinfect every mattress. The third person cleans the 2 bathrooms and downstairs loo. We do a thorough job so it takes us until 12 noon sometimes. We stop at 11am for tea or coffee and then carry on. Then there is shopping to do. The other 2 who are not cooking are on duty all day but the chef can go off for a couple of hours. Pilgrims start arriving from about 1 pm until about 5 30 although some arrived at 11am while we were still cleaning. We had a record number last night and there were 38 of us for dinner. I was the cook and I now taking cooking a meal for 38 in my stride. I was not phased by the extra 10 that arrived after I had started cooking! All pilgrims said it was good. We always also prepare a separate meal for vegetarians. It was our youngest pilgrim, Logan,'s 7th birthday so we bought a small cake from the bakery and put 7 candles on it and all sang happy birthday to him. He is quite an amazing pilgrim for 7 years old and he seems to love being on pilgrimage. They ate us out of house and home so had to rush over to the being on bakery at 10 pm to buy more bread for breakfast We had 2 ladies from Alaska, pilgrims from USA, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Chile, Belgium, Slovenia, Spain, Scotland, France and Sweden. USA is definitely in the majority. Padre Jesus still comes over every night before mass to see if all is well. I am getting really good at nodding my head very sagely and saying 'si, si' a couple of times interspersed with the odd 'bueno' and 'valle'. I am not sure what I am agreeing to but am getting better at understanding or guessing the gist of it. This is really the most amazing experience and all 3 of us feel we have grown so much in such a short space of time. This is one of the messages in the book yesterday : when I was walking from the big city I was hurting but I knew I could not stay in the hustle of the crowd. I wondered if I had made the right decision to leave. God reminded me to have faith. When I got to this refuge I knew why I had made the extra journey. This is what I was looking for. True refuge, true spirit, shared dinner- the meaning of the pilgrimage is shown here by these women. Millions of thanks. That message makes all the hard work so worthwhile
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