May 26.  Day 14. Walked 108.4 km (67.35 miles) since my last blog. Walked 345.2 of 787 km (214.5 of 489 miles) total.

It has been a few days since my last blog.  I started to get concerned that the walk was starting to be more about the blog, than the blog was about the walk, so I decided that I will blog when I feel the urge, or when something blogworthy happens.  Today, both were true!

I started today in Boadilla del Camino and am writing this from Carrion de los Condes after a 26.1km (16.2) mile walk today.  For the last two nights I have stayed in two really nice albergues.  Both had a great community feel and served community dinners.  Last night especially, there were people out in the courtyard for hours drinking wine, talking and singing.  It had such a nice feeling.  As many of us are going at approximately the same pace, I see many of the same faces night after night.  I have become friends with one man (Nikos) in particular.  Nikos is from Greece, but lives mainly in Germany now.  This is his fourth time walking the Camino, and he has basically decided to make it his life.  He has started a business in which he walks the Camino with clients who do not want to walk it alone.  Since he knows the Camino so well, he is a great resource.  Tonight he is staying in a different albergue from me, but I ran into him in a cafe and he invited me to come to his albergue tonight where he is making dinner for 6 or 7 other walkers (I can´t write pilgrims with a straight face, though that is what people call each other out here!). 

Today was a very memorable day for me.  I did not get a lot of sleep last night, and as usually happens when I don´t sleep, I was dragging a bit -- especially by the end of the day.  I reached a town called Villacazar de Sirga at about noon and had to decide whether to go another 6 km to my real destination for the day, or stop there for the night.  As I said, I was dragging more than usual and had already walked 20km, but I also felt it was important for me to reach Carrion tonight, because just past Carrion is a 17.5 km (10.9 mi) stretch with almost no facilities (including water and food).  It is the longest such stretch on the Camino and I felt it was important to start it first thing in the morning, when I would be fresh.  Just ahead of me I saw what looked to be about 100 school students starting to walk on the camino.  As I caught up to them, a few of them started asking me questions.  When they found out that I was from the US and that I did not speak Spanish, they were fascinated.  They were completely surrounding me as we walked together, practicing their English (which was pretty good, actually!) by peppering me with questions like, "What is your favorite animal?"  I felt a bit like the Pied Piper as the kids were laughing, singing, asking me questions, and trying to teach me a little Spanish.  Every time I would get something right, one of the girls would yell "very good!", and they especially loved it when I was able to pronounce a new word correctly, rolling r and all.  The 6km walking with them went more quickly than any 6km I have walked to date, and I soon found myself in Carrrion yelling "Adios" to my new little friends, and wishing I had 6km more to walk with them.  What a great day... definitely blog worthy!

Quick update on my health... my hip still bothers me sometimes but I have found that if I take a break when it starts to hurt, I can usually avoid the kind of pain that makes me feel I have to stop.  So I would say that while it is not completely behind me, I am more and more confident that it won´t be a huge issue going forward (knock on wood!).  As for the nearly foot sized blister on my left foot, well, that is another story completely.  While it does not stop me from walking, or even slow me down much at all, it is a constant reminder that I am in the process of walking 500 miles.  By the way -- tomorrow marks the half-way point... right on schedule!

Buen Camino...