June 18--The Good Life

Sunday BABY! We got to sleep in… but wait DID WE?! Fun fact about Spain - and as it turns out, after consulting my mom - in ALL of Europe, there are no screens. You know, screens on a window. This is totally fine because they are big into central heating and cooling HFAC systems right?! WRONG! Europeans love their fresh air, so if it is hot inside, they open a window, and if it is cold inside, they light a fire. This means that throughout this entire trip, we have slept with the windows open cause otherwise not only does the air get stale in our room, but it gets super-hot at night. This means there are just CONSTANTLY flies in every building, like they just get everywhere. Thankfully they don’t bite, and they don’t usually bother us that much…

Well, as always, we slept with the windows open, but the flies in the small town of Ribadiso are built different because as soon as the sun was up they kept landing on me and my roommate, it was disgusting and annoying AND guaranteed that we did NOT get to sleep in…

We did have a nice day today though – we had church outside, and the first part of it was taken up by a sort of testimony meeting where we talked about experiences we have had, lessons we’ve learned or miracles we’ve seen along the Camino. I will say it wasn’t as spiritual as it could’ve been, and I think that is in large part due to the fact that we are here for educational and cultural reasons, but I did have something that I feel like has been cemented in my mind. Along the Camino, we have these beautiful views, smells, experiences, but it is mixed with this pain and discomfort of hiking and living for the walk. I mean, we climb these seemingly impossibly long slopes, but then at the top is the most beautiful sunset we’ve seen in years, and we can see for miles around. Or it rains all day, and we get pretty soaked, but the air smells amazing and the plants are more vibrant than ever before for the next couple days. We can choose to focus on the beauty, or we can focus on the uncomfortableness of it all. We can focus on - as Isaac affectionally calls it – the swack (sweaty back), or the fresh fruit offered to us along the way. If we expect to see the bad, if we go into something wanting and expecting it to be bad, it will be. Our feet will be in pain, it will be too hot or too cold, the conversation will be dull. But if we expect good – not always great, but good – we will find the good. We will find beauty in the everyday life, in the small blessings of cold water, or refreshing watermelon, in a hotel with good wifi. Take the good where you can, and leave the bad where it is. Why kick rocks and bemoan our discomfort when we can look up past the brim of our hat and see all the world laid out before us in splendor? There will always be good and bad, and sometimes one will outweigh the other, but there will always be something good to find. 


For example, our hotel had an automated lawn cutter :) I didn't take many pictures today, but I did notice a very resilient flower blooming in the middle of all of this mowed lawn :)

The rest of the day included a FAT nap, a walk to the supermarket, a picnic lunch with friends, and a dinner with fish – I realized I’m OKAY with Hake (the fish we have had now on 3 separate occasions) but I still prefer cod. The true piez de resistance of the day turned out to be another game involving the sock balls! You remember those two socks we used as a ball yesterday in the pool? Well, I brought them out again, well, more accurately, pulled them off the clothesline where they had been hanging all day, and MAN did we have some fun! I just threw the “ball” to another student before I went to go call Gordon in the back lawn of the hotel, but as I was calling Gordon, the game got INTENSE quick! Like for real, it  started out as a simple game of keep away that quickly grew into a 4-on-4 game of keep away, with elements of tackle football and rugby incorporated into it within a few minutes. By the end of it, we all had some new bruises, were drenched in sweat, and had taken three separate breaks to let our stomachs settle after dinner, cause we literally played this RIGHT after finishing a three-course meal :D and we had a blast doing it. Like seriously, the screams of joy, the pushing, the throwing, the playful banter, it just worked, and it was so fun. Occasionally you just got to let the inner-child free to play stupid, crazy fun yard games and get soaking wet with sweat, and get red in the face cause you’ve been playing it for so long. You gotta play till the sun goes down and the grass cools, you gotta take off your shoes and play in bare feet, get covered in grass stains till you can’t recognize the color of your clothes anymore. Sometimes you just gotta bring it back to the basics, and let the laughter and joy erupt from you in waves 

We ended the night by soaking our feet in the pool, talking about life so long that the air got colder while the water on our feet seemed to get warmer. It was a beautiful night, a great game, and a great space to do it in. I’m so glad we got to play in a hotel like that at least one more time – it’s just so much better than sitting in our hotel room trying to play games, or watch a movie, or draw or write in our journals. Having a good outdoor space that feels semi-private cannot be overstated.

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