The night before last I felt something in bed with me.

He insisted I pet him, took a bath, and played around the room before settling down again, gradually taking up more and more of the bed. He left when I insisted I deserved most of it.

Two days ago I walked in to Cacabelos and as I passed the albergue municipal, there were men trimming the cedar bushes. The smell was wonderful. I wanted to take their picture because they were using hand tools. In the US it would have been electric clippers and a blower instead of hand trimmer and a rake.

On the way back I passed a delivery truck stopped on the hill going over the bridge. I got the feeling he wasn’t sure he should go up. Finally he decided to do it, and as he started up crates of grapes fell off the back.

I got his attention and gestured. He stopped the truck, got out, saw the mess, and got out his phone. After a brief but energetic call he began picking up the crates.

When I told the story at lunch, attempting to do it in Spanish, they asked, “Did you help?” I explained that no, I didn’t, because in my experience men who might have accepted help from a young woman won’t accept it from an old one. They get embarrassed.

I wanted to take a picture but doing it where he could see would have been beyond rude. So I took a selfie.

Once he got really busy I took this.

The WIFI at home wasn’t good enough to upload the pictures, and yesterday when I got to the library there were three papers waiting so I didn’t have a chance to update.

So I looked out the door and Trudy had something in her mouth. It was a lizard.

Then turned her back to me (mercifully) and began crunching. At that point I left. Cats. They’re the same the world over.

There has been stuff happening, but most of it is nothing I want to put out into the world in writing. Let’s just say too many people in my life are sick right now, both back home and here.

The weather here is slowly changing; it is less excruciatingly hot. This is not necessarily good, as one of the primary reasons people stop in Pieros is because they are too hot and tired to make it to anywhere else. We had eight pilgrims at dinner two days ago, but no one for two days before that and no one yesterday or today.

Mar says the end of August is always slow but it picks up. It hasn’t yet. But I have a backup plan if it doesn’t and my presence is no longer needed. I will leave some things here and travel to Porto to walk the Camino Portuguese. Then I will come back and get them and head home, maybe in enough time to attend my 40 year reunion. We’ll see.

Anyway, crosswalks. They look like this.

You can see the Spanish are far less reticent about parking near the corner than Americans are.

Anyway, I have not gotten used to the fact that Spanish drivers a) watch for pedestrians and b) actually stop for them. So I’m always standing on the corner, waiting to see if the car will stop. The drivers get frustrated because if I had just gone ahead and crossed they wouldn’t have had to stop or only briefly because I would be across already.

So I have perfected a kind of “I’m not crossing the street; I’m just standing here” stance which I maintain until the car is safely past. If there is more than one I go down the street a little like, “I don’t want to cross; I’m just walking” and when they are all gone I go back to the crosswalk.

Because here is the thing. Few people jaywalk here. If I had to guess, I would guess the law is “If you hit the pedestrian in the crosswalk it’s your fault. If they weren’t in the crosswalk, then…🤷‍♀️.” But I don’t know that; it’s just a feeling.

So I don’t really know what else to write. Like I said, the things that are happening are either private (mine or someone else’s) or part of an internal journey I’m not ready to reveal.

Okay, one more thing. What IS it about teenage boys and cologne? Mar’s son just passed me about ten feet away, and I still smelled him.

Not much happened yesterday. No pilgrims. Some interesting conversations, but you kinda had to be there. Maybe something exciting will happen tomorrow.

August 28 was my birthday. The night before there was a fiesta in Pieros. No particular reason, they just wanted to have a party. There was drinking, and dancing, and a tortilla competition.

It was so wonderful watching the people dance. Such joy and freedom of movement, but with real steps. I tried to pick some up, but the only one I really got was the rhumba.

The next day we celebrated my birthday. I got two happy birthday songs, one the standard but in Spanish, the other one I’d never heard before.

But the work never stops, even on your birthday. I didn’t need to do a whole lot of cleaning, since there were so few pilgrims the night before, but Mar and I folded the laundry. Gaze upon the awesomeness below.

That, folks, is a fitted sheet. I now know how to fold them so they are flat. I told Mar so few people in the US know how to do this we make jokes about it. I also told her of all the things I will learn and do here, THIS ONE will impress my mother the most.

Well, the library is about to close, so I need to pack up. Catch you guys tomorrow!

There is a small church in Pieros, but like most iglesias in super small pueblos (thirteen people total) it is only open a few times a year. Yesterday Ulysses (a pilgrim/volunteer, ) Irena (his amor,) and I got to tour it.

The church interior. Much of it is covered in plastic to protect it from pajaritas (birds.)

The church was built in 1010, and is one of the oldest in Spain. It is even older than the cathedral in Santiago. Its name is St. Martin de Pieros.

We got to climb the stairs to the platform that accesses the campanario (bell tower.) This close, you can see estrellas (stars) carved in the ceiling.

We went back downstairs and looked around a bit more.

Suddenly Ulysses says, “We’re going back up.” Apparently, after saying no, we couldn’t go into the bell tower itself, the man changed his mind. So we climbed the ladder through a very narrow space to this.

And this, folks, is why I do Workaway. No one had been in that bell tower for years. You don’t get to do this sort of thing as a tourist; you have to know a local.

Today when I walked to the library there was a market in the square.

We had a storm last night, with hail and everything. Mar was gone and Martin was preparing dinner for the pilgrims. Suddenly Gonzalo came bursting in. “La Casita es un rio!” he exclaimed. “Un río!” I quickly figured out I would be making dinner alone. Thank goodness I had made it under Mar’s direction, so I had a decent chance of actually doing it. And I did.

Gonzalo has a video of water pouring down the stairs like a waterfall, but I don’t know if he can share it with me. But that was our excitement last night.