Jamie Fehr

This post should be pretty exciting. So much happened in the last 10 days that I could probably spend the next 10 days writing about it. Instead I want to share a few facts, memories, history and relevance to me.

A very brief History

Basically the Camino de Santiago exists because it is believed that the bones of the apostle James are buried there in Santiago de Compostela. And as a result they built a Cathedral and people make a pilgrimage to it have have there sins pardoned. Really, you can get a pilgrims passport and as long as your credentials are good when you get to Santiago de Compostela you can get a Certificate of Pardon for past sins and exemption from Purgatory. I didn’t have proper credentials and so I did not get my certificate, I guess I will just have to continuing trusting in God.

Some Facts

• It was a 9 day, 200 kilometer walk through the north of Spain
• I left Málaga on July 14th, 2006 at 23:10 and didn’t return until July 26th, 2006 15:30
• We were a group of about 50 people, half of whom were Spaniards. The other half were from Columbia, Germany, Finland, Canada (me), or the United States.
• The longest day was 29 kilometers of walking and the shortest was 15.
• The trip, clear across Spain on bus is 17 hours, so I spent 34 hours on overnight buses getting to and from the Camino.
• The Camino crew included Mister Blister, a foot expert, he popped and disinfected and wrapped all the blisters for those nine days. It was a big job.

The Schedule

We had a pretty rough schedule, our despot, I mean leader, Joel, had everyone up by 07:30 every day. Breakfast was usually Coffee or Hot Chocolate with bread and jam. What am I saying usually, it was that, never more or less. Immediately following breakfast we would hit the trail and walk till one or two in the afternoon, at which point the Concinero’s (Cooks) would show up and get sandwich’s ready for everyone. Every one would sit around and chat, eat food and eventually succumb to the reality that there was more walking to be had. The bit of trail to our evening place of stay generally went pretty quick, it was just hard because of how hot it was in the afternoon.

We would get to the campsite, gym, or hostel where we were to spend the night, and while I generally intend to take a nap, I usually joined some game of cards or frisbee or went and found a river jump into, the afternoons were definitely good fun. It was also really funny to watch 30 or so people limping around in the evenings because of how sore they were. Before long it was time for the God talk and announcements, so everyone would pack up what they were doing to go listen. The God talks would finish up with a small group discussion time. It was really hard to try and share what I thought about God in a foreign language.

Right as the Discussions were finishing up supper would start, and this was the one meal that did have some good variety. There were a lot of different pasta’s, salad’s, and meat’s to be had here and they were good.

The evening would generally end with time spent in fun and games with everyone heading to bed sometime around midnight only to get up bright and early and do it all over again the next day.

The only change in schedule was on the ninth day of the Camino. Everything started as usual but instead of having lunch on the road we had an early diner/late lunch at 15:00. It was very formal, there was a lot of speeches, food, applause, thank-you’s, presents, etc. And after the meal there was a big group photo followed by nothing, that was the end of our groups activities. Later on there was some amazing fireworks and concerts, but we were no longer a group. ¡Que Triste! (How Sad! for you less spanish people.)

Some Interesting Moments

This trip was one of my first major outings into the world of speaking spanish, and one of the first lessons that came up was the difference between estar bien and estar bueno. I thought that bien and bueno both meant good, and they do, it’s just that bueno is a lot more good then bien. So at one point I was asked ¿Cómo estas? and feeling pretty confident in my spanish I responded, Yo estoy muy bueno. I guess your not allowed to say that. I have now been informed that saying estoy bueno is a bit cocky and like saying I’m hot. So thanks for the lesson Ana, now I will only be saying I’m hot, while knowing what I am saying. On a side note, for the last lunch as a group, everyone was expected to dress up. And when Ana saw the cleaned up Jamie, she called me bueno, it was awesome.

Interesting moment number two. Towards the End of the journey, everyone had walked quite a few kilometers and was getting really tired. One afternoon Alecia (don’t worry, you probably don’t know her) mentioned that she was tired, and I being the gentleman that I am offered to carry her. I gave her four options; the fireman’s carry, the bridal carry, the piggy back, or on the shoulders. She resisted for a while, but eventually curiosity and exhaustion got the better of her, and she had to she how this would go. It went alright, I really wasn’t able to carry her all the way up the hill because the sweat and sunscreen from both of us really didn’t help keep things together. I guess it was kind of gross when you think about it.

And finally, you should know that July 25th in the town of Santiago de Compostela is a big holiday. Which is why the dates that we picked ended with July 25th, it’s the cumulation of a lot of peoples pilgrimages, and it’s a holiday. A holiday so big in fact, that they cover their 1000 year cathedral with fireworks the night before and then set them all off. I have heard that it is one the best fireworks shows that you will ever get to see in your life. But I missed them. I got really sick the last two days of walking and although I finished the whole Camino on my own two feet I was still a feeling a little nauseous while waiting in that packed plaza for the show to begin. And so an unexpected bowel movement just two minutes before the start of the show sent me crawling through the hordes trying to find the safety of my room in the monastery. It’s an embarrassing and gross story, so I won’t go into more detail unless you ask for it.

Oh, and the Pilgrim Crossings in the North of Spain are definitely worth mentioning.

Why this trip was important to me

I really enjoyed the Camino because it gave me an opportunity to learn a whole bunch more spanish that I would not have encountered otherwise. My vocabulary now includes the words for blister, hill, and are we there yet? But also my verbs and sentence structure is whole lot better. I am able to express what I need to in a foreign language now, I can’t write that well, but I can read and the improvements feel good.

The biggest part of the Camino that I enjoyed was getting to know people. I now have good friends in every part of Spain. And I have every intention seeing many of them again. I now know people in my own city that are my age that I can hang out with. It’s awesome.

So, the conclusion of the matter is that I will have to stay in Spain for another year after this one to complete the Camino and to continue to do God’s work among the young people of Spain. Yay!