Villadangos del Paramo

Don´t forget to scroll down past this blog. Dan took it upon himself to update as well.. two for the price of one today!

Well, I had a lovely time resting in Burgos and Leon. They are beautiful cities with great cathedrals that we got to spend a nice long time exploring. We also had a television in Burgos so we got to see Spain beat the feared Germans in their first ever appearance in the final 4. Now they´re going onto the finals and we need to figure out a way to find a tv in whatever hostel we´re at because it´s going to be crazy.

By the way, did I mention that I take after my mother? Not only did I need a break after essentially camping for a lowly 6 days, but I did it for two days in a four star hotel. It was aweomse, and now I´m back to sweating it out for 4 euros a night with 20 something other stinky pilgrims.

It is incredibly hot here too... in some places it hit 40 degrees Celcius, which I think is something like 104 degrees Fahrenheit. No shade, no trees, just shrubs and grass. But, we skipped over a relatively boring chunk, at least.. that´s what Rick Steve´s said. And I have absolutely no regrets.

If we end early which is looking like a real possibility, then we might fly out to some other city in Europe and do a little sight-seeing while we´re here. We´re thinking London... that way all the Barnes´ will have visited it within a 6 month span. Also, they speak English there.. which sounds good right now, although I´m getting great practice in with my vosotros and subjunctive (in time to start teaching it 5 days after I get back).

But I have to tell you all about my favorite moment of our break in Burgos. It was so beautiful, so absolutely perfect, so wonderfully redemptive for all the pain going on in my left leg... I found a way to get actual milk here in Spain.

Holy cow! It was hard. They don´t have regular milk here, it´s all in cartons that are radiated so that they don´t have to be refrigerated. So it´s always warm and never has any flavor. Now, I know I´ve been bragging to some of you about how I´ve given up on actual dairy and replaced it with the wonderfulness of Trader Joe´s rice milk, but there is nothing that beats the feeling of a cold glass of milk straight from a vending machine where you literally have to buy a bottle and then hold it to the spout while milk comes out of the little plastic teat at 4 degrees Celcius. Awesomeness in a bottle for 1,10 euros.

So, other randomness while I have the time... Will someone please tell Laura that I had a dream about her? We were eating pizza rolls and I was telling her about how Dan woke me up the other night by randomly shooting his arm out and grabbing my shoulder (he thought I was a bag of golf clubs that was falling down...apparently) and when I went to reenact it I woke my own self up because I reached out to grab somebody and opened my eyes.

It´s really hard for me to be away from home for this long. Especially now that I have my own home and adult life. I miss all these little simple things of life, like going to the fridge and pushing my glass up against the lever and getting cold water. Simple things. My puppy. My very own bed. Taking a shower with conditioner.

I saw a quote that said "Que es peregrinar? Aprender a renunciar a casi todo." Roughly translated- What does it mean to do a pilgrimage? To learn to give up almost everything.

Including my grande chai creme soy milk frappuccinos from Starbucks. Oh how I miss thee.