Santiago Eve

October 19
The Xunta here...

...has an interesting feature--a light on the wall for each bed.  In the shower room, although the stalls have no doors, there are two half-walls opposite each other separating the shower from the tiny ante room, so there is a modicum of privacy.  Otherwise, there's nothing extraordinary about it.  However, it's unfair of me to say that, because I don't see any other part of it except the dorm room.  Jerri does our laundry (so we'll have a pack full of clean clothes for the last leg and trip home) while I blog, so she sees more of the place than I do.

We do visit the local church to see if there is an evening Mass.  Hurray!  It's open.  Inside, three men are in the middle of a prayer service, so we sit in the back pew and look around the church.  The wall behind the altar is a beautiful scallop shell and there are ears of corn in the altar arrangements (discovered by Jerri's very observant eyes).

After their service, Jerri and I walk around the church and stamp our credencials.  With this one, we've managed to get six sellos today.  Guess I worried for nothing...as is usually true.  :-p

Back in the dorm room, we spend our time in the usual way.  There is an outlet at the foot of my bed, so I'm able to draft quite a few posts to send later.  Before long, we hear rain splattering against the dormer windows behind our beds.  We forgo attending Mass.  As I see it, it's not a day of obligation and we did sit through a prayer service (even if we didn't understand it).  Surely God acknowledges that we visited Him, Mass or no.

In what seems like the middle of the night (but must be before 10 p.m.--the lights are still on), an Asian couple (I can't identify nationality because I do not know what language they're speaking) arrive.  They have the bunks above Jerri and me.  They whisper, yet make little attempt to move around quietly as they make their beds, shower, and prepare themselves for bed.  I know they made it in to the Xunta just under the wire because the lights go out shortly after they arrive.  The man turns on the light by his bed and it seems extremely bright in contrast to the deep darkness of the rest of the dorm.  I must be dozing off during their preparations, which seem to take a long time, because later Jerri tells me that one of the French women sleeping nearby scolds the man about the light and I have no recollection of that.  I have learned to routinely take ibuprofen for my feet before going to bed, and therefore, I have been sleeping more soundly.  Guess this is one of the nights when exhaustion trumps disturbances in the night.