one week and counting

...well we´re still alive, so thats something.

its been officially one full week of walking for anna and i at this point, and to be honest, i am much worse for the wear than she is. anna looks tan, healthy, and has a stride to her step that i envy immensely (she just knocked on wood). i, on the other hand, am blistered, am finally feeling some pain in my broken foot area, had two days of unbelievable pàin in my hip rotators as we went over the highest point in the mountains, and now seem to have acquired a tightness in my achilles tendon that is as mentally distressing as it is physically painful. its also swollen. AWESOME. basically, to sum up, i am a limping mess. this is frustrating, as one might imagine, for me because i wish everything didn´t hurt so much (although my back and shoulders seem to be doing okay...at least until tomorrow, when they will probably develop a strange rash much like the one on my left ankle) and for anna because she could probably go twice as fast without my poor little limping body.

the only thing distracting me from all my painful ailments is that it is so beautiful here that at least five times a day at a bare minimum, anna or i or both of us stop and just say, "um, can we just pause for a moment and LOOK AT THIS VIEW!?"

as we came over the mountains two days ago, the views from the trail were so spectacular that i was able to momentarily blink back the tears that were forming in my eyes from the pain in my hip and i was able to recognize how incredibly lucky i am to be doing this camino. remember, i was in so much pain at this point that i had to tell myself to take every single step and i still felt this lucky. i spent the night with our canadian friends/trail moms ana and eleanor while anna h. went farther along. the town, el cerdo, has only 14 people living in, which is typical of many of the towns that we pass through. the old woman who owned the supermarket gave us free plums and candy and offered to make us dinner for free. these are the kind of people who you find along the camino. there are new friends every night and locals help point the way every morning as we walk. we can´t believe that we are more than a third of the way through: we only have 10 days or so left! eek!

following us around is a pack of spanish high school students. i can only really describe this phenomenon by calling it a kind of spanish-catholic (is there another kind of spanish?) birthright/teen tour of northern spain that gives spanish high schoolers a chance to gain college credits in exchange for walking the camino. they just sang "knock knock knocking on heaven´s door" with spanish accents. priceless. perhaps they will serenade us tomorrow morning at 5am, as they were kind enough to do this morning. we can only pray. its actually kind of nice to see them everyday.

sophie, this is a comment mostly for you, but all of you pioneer valley kids will understand me when i describe the albergue we are staying in tonight: it looks like a classic leverett house. kind of swiss family robinson meets dirty hippies meets religious icons meets new wave vegetarianism. its pretty rocking/funky. the town we are in tonight, villafranca del bierzo, is an absolutely classically spanish mountian town: tiny winding one way streets that are for some reason two way superhighways of speeding cars, hills all around that are greener than green, and plazas filled with cafes and archways, and everything is on an extreme slant, since the whole town is on a hill.

tomorrow, we head out of town and start up the final mountain. it will take us about three days to get over the mountain, since we are taking a slower pace for my battered body (although anna might want to go faster, right now i literally can´t), but once we are on the other side, we will be in sarria, the last place new pilgrims can technically start the camino, and only 110km kilometers (about 5 days) from santiago.

okay! my turn at the internet is over--another pilgrim awaits her turn. lots of love to all--i find that two and half weeks into being here, what i miss most are your voices and your stories. tell me everything. send me emails. send me baseball scores. the outside world seems very far away.