Thursday

Tomorrow is a public holiday and apparently there will be many Spanish families out walking the Camino so we expect to be busy. We had such a great young crowd last night, including a South African girl, Jane, from Cape Town but she is only going as far as Burgos. They were reluctant to get going this morning and the last stragglers left at 8.35. Today they are generally older so there will be a totally different atmosphere. The girls last night decided that they wanted to sleep in the loft and all the guys were banished to the downstairs dormitory. Amazingly enough this young crowd left the largest donation per capita. We often ave past hospitaleros calling in on us Carmen who worked with Lee has been twice and we had a young Spanish guy last night who worked here in August. He said that there were 4 hospitaleros here during that period. We love watching the dynamics of the group. Pilgrims arrive on their own or in pairs but by the time they have all worked together, chopping everything we need for our communal meal and all setting the table, they all become good friends by the time they eat together. After the meal they wash the dishes as a team and by then they have bonded enough to share with each other at our candle-lit reflection period in the church at 9.30 pm. Breakfast is always a noisy affair as they are all on very good terms because by this time they have chopped together, eaten together, shared together and slept together. The fellowship aspect is the most important part of their short stay here and it is this that makes it exceptional for them. We go to bed very tired but the rewards are immeasurable. We are lucky that Barbara has a rented car here so we go into Santa Domingo each day to shop otherwise we would have to rely on Padre Jesus to take us twice a week. I have been in the disaster zone - we use copious amounts of bleach to disinfect everything and I must have had some on my finger when I was putting my contact lens in as it promptly disintegrated. After 2 days of terrible eye irritation Barbara took me in to Santo Domingo to an optician who found a small piece of my lens still in my eye. Then I cut my finger badly on a very sharp knife. I am on kitchen duty tonight and am waiting for another hour before starting to see whether more pilgrims will arrive. I have just made a bread and butter pudding with the leftover bread from yesterday. We leave on Tues just as we are in the swing of things and our replacements should arrive on Monday. Father Jesus is taking us out to lunch on Monday.
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