Mi Peregrinaje with James

Last day with everyone! As I mentioned earlier, I've been writing train letters for everyone - final messages for everybody, and a drawing I thought they would like or that was a staple of the Camino for them. It was fun cause I was able to write and give my train letters to people while on the train! I was glad to see that everyone seemed to really like them, and they were all showing each other their personalized pictures that I had drawn. I never know when I do stuff like this if people are going to care or enjoy it, so it was really nice that they all seemed to really appreciate the thought and time I had put into the train letters. I mean I've been working on those every night for probably the last week. I even wrote them for the professors, which means I ended up doing 17 total (I combined two of the couples so I had fewer to plan and draw) ); We took the train to Madrid so that we could fly out from there Saturday morning. Let me tell you, I have been taking the cooler n...

Oh my GOSH what a great day! I understand this is a study abroad, but holy SMOKES was it nice to just have a day that felt like vacation! To preface, we went to the western most tip of Spain, called Finesterra , or Fisterra depending on what map and language you are looking at. Its name comes from " Fin de la Tierra ," or end of the world. And MAN does it look like it - once you get to that coast, it is just blue as far as the eye can see until it all blurs together on the horizon. And back in the day when they thought the earth was flat, you can imagine sailing off the end of the world from there. BUT we didn't start there - first we visited this waterfall, I don't actually think I ever got the name of it, but at least in Spain it is the only place where fresh water flows directly into the ocean. Man, was it beautiful. And very tranquil. As we are coming to the end of this trip, it was nice to climb up on the rocks by the water and just contemplate.  But the best pa...

The day started off so well, I went running this morning, and my man, Tim, came with me today. Tim ran cross-country in high school and he is BUILT for running, so he was flying through the streets of Santiago while I trailed behind him like a balloon behind a child. But for real though, it was super fun to go running with him, but MAN Santiago is just one giant HILL I swear! It was insane how much elevation we dropped and gained just running for two miles! Our day was super full, but thankfully we got to start a little later, so around 9:00 we headed to the Cathedral. A not so fun part of the day was that we had two one-hour lectures, one at the beginning and one at the end of the day. The first in my opinion was way better:  it was about the original stone chorus that was in the Cathedral when it was built. Something interesting I may have already mentioned about the Cathedrals in Spain, but the Chrous – where the choir sits and sings and also where the organ is held - is literal...

Today was our last day of hiking! I’m writing this IN SANTIAGO! We started out the day well with a BIG breakfast (too big for me, but the guys in our group appreciated it). The plan was to walk the first nine miles at our own pace and then all meet up for the last three miles into Santiago.  The last leg was really beautiful.  We stayed ahead of the hoards of high schoolers so it was pretty quiet and peaceful :) I collected my last few s ellos (and filled up my 8th credencial ).  And then, I have to admit, this is where the sentimentality of the day ended. We got to the meeting spot, meandered around for like 45 minutes, then went to go take pictures.  But if I’m being honest, none of the pictures seemed like they turned out super well.  It took like another 30 minutes to get the pictures, and after that we all had to walk behind the slowest member of our group - Terri, Dr Weatherford’s wife who pretty recently got through cancer. That is fine walking slow, but...

The walk was quite nice today--we saw some beautiful flowers, met the sweetest dog ever, and I got a TON of sellos . So I just have to talk about this dog a little bit because she was just so sweet! So we were walking past this pasture that was probably four feet higher than the Camino path, and we just all of a sudden see this black shape slinking toward us through the tall grass. At first I couldn’t tell if the dog was friendly, but as soon as I whistled at her, she got all submissive – low to the ground, ears down – and her tail started wagging. I don’t know exactly what her job is – but she KNOWS that to do her job, she has got to stay on HER grass, so she leaned as far over from this pasture as she could while still staying on the top part of it so she could get as many pets as possible    It is so interesting that no matter how close we seem to get to Santiago, it still feels like small town Spain. We are literally in the last 25k of the trip, and the town we stayed in is as...