Tuesday 15 March

We are on our own. Maria and Chema left at 10 after showing us their cleaning routine. Not ten minute went by before our first pilgrim arrived.  Alex from Australia. He turned out to be a really great guy because he helped in almost every thing. Pilgrims continued to straggle in keeping us busy all day.  Our second pilgrim was Adam from Brazil, who we met the day before in Logroño and had all the problems. Our third pilgrim was Kristian from Hungry. He's got some notoriety already as one night he couldn't find an open albergue so he slept outdoors, in the snow. Our other pilgrims were Chiaa, Filippo, Andrea and  Carhela from Italy; Georg, Felix, Noel, Sebastian, and Hella from Germany; Robert from the Uk; Cesar from Spain; Suzane from Canada; and Nora from Switzerland. All young people!  All nice. Then we had a number of visitors who drop by to see the albergue, three different groups in all. They make it interesting, especially when you are in the middle of cleaning!

Around 4, I started working on Danny's stew.  We only had enough for eight and we were up to 14 pilgrims at that time. I added more potatoes, chorizo, garbanzo beans, and peppers to the stew. Palma made rice pudding. And a bunch of the pilgrims made a salad. About this time our last two pilgrims arrived, so we were up to 16 pilgrims!

So as the day before, Mass at 7, dinner at 8 and pilgrim benidiction after dinner. I led the blessing for the food, which was Father Jesus' Rap de la Bendicion. First you got to get the pilgrims to knock on the table a couple times and then clap repetitively, once we got the beat I say
Estelle  es el rap de la Bendicion
Bendice Senor la alimentacion
Bendice a mis hermanos
Bendice a mis amigos
Bendice a todo aquel que the day la mano
Encojo el codo y con esto queda bendicido todo.

Good food.  Everyone loved the salad, the "Danny " stew, and the rice pudding. Most folks then jumped in to clean up.  After which, we head over to the church for the pilgrim benediction.  My first benidiction..pretty nervous about it but I did ok and the pilgrims loved it. The benediction involves going to the choir loft in this really old church (over 600 years old). We have candles lit. Everyone sits in a choir seat. Not sure what we do when we get over 25 pilgrims as that is all the seats. I tell them the history of the church and the albergue, then we all talk about why we are walking the Camino and finally we hug and greet each other as fellow peligrinos. Sounds corny, but it is very magical and they love it. I am finding my Spanish is a struggle, as I have lost a lot of my vocabulary but I am making due. Sorry for being repetitive.