ABROAD...again


Well, I am living abroad...yet again. After Singapore, Spain, Turkey, Korea the Netherlands (and returning to Spain for a Masters) I've unpacked my backpack a little closer to home in Mexico. I live in Culiacan where I am trying my hand at teaching English to University and high school students. Below you'll find random updates as I go to festivals, explore my city or just feel like sharing a random story.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Camino Day One - Lesson: Just say it!






6:00am Woke up at 6:00am pressed snooze
6:10am Repeat
6:20am Repeat
6:30am Crawled out of bed. Packed bag. Got dressed. Put on my shirt, sweater, windbreaker, and other fun layers. Headed out with my directions and map.
7:00am Finally found out where the heck I was supposed to be going. The weather was good for being early, it had rained the night before but didn´t look like it was going to rain again right away.
7:15am Found my first yellow arrow!!! When you walk the Camino you follow these yellow arrows that point out the path to you.

Stopped keeping track of time :P

Entered my first town Aldeaseconde Armuña and bought a big water. Ran into some Germans who were trying to find a bus. They did the Camino last year and really enjoyed it. I helped them fnd their bus stop and they wished me luck!

I followed the arrows until I got to a fenced off river...judged that I had possibly miscalculated and retraced my steps. Found that maybe I should have gone a different way and tried that. Beautriful countryside rivers, gorgeous plants, everything was very green and not another person to be seen most the time.
Met up with my first pilgrims of the road Anton, Rahon, and Josh. They were German pilgrims (I´d later discover this is a common trend) who had walked from Salamanca! So they´d already been walking for a month! The walk went easier with them as I had someone to confirm the proper paths and talk about their days of walking. It was a pretty flat walk with LOTS of mud! To the point where my shoes became caked with it and lifting them up became an almost constant challenge.

Finally we arrived in Calzada de Valdunciel. The Germans were walking on to Cubo del Tierra de Vino but as it was my first day I chose to stop at the Alburgue. I was a bit confused (as my book doesn´t actually give directions to the alburgue) so I asked a very nice couple (after walking around lost for a while). Instead of asking for directions to the albrugue I wasn´t sure how to say it or if it would seem silly, so I asked about a bar that was supposed to be near. Then I went to the house where I could find a key to the alburgue. Finally some nice man asked me if I was a peregrina and walked me to the Alburgue.

Turns out this was where I had asked the couple in the first place! And they were the hosteleros (the people that volunteer to keep the alburgue running) so if I just would have asked them in the first place that could have saved me some time!

Lesson One of the Camino
Just ask people what you want to know. Being subtle has its time and place but for the most part in life if you want a simple answer then ask the simple question! beating around the bush might work sometimes, but walking around that bush takes a LOT of time and effort that is better spent doing something else!


The Alburgue was a small 8 bed set up with a kitchen, small common room and two bathrooms. It was paid by donation and they reccommended 3 Euros. It started raining about 2:00pm and I was very happy that I decided not to try to continue walking that day and instead opted to stay indoors reading and planning briefly. At night I huddled in my sleeping bag put a blanket over it and went to sleep with full intetnions of starting my walk early the next day.

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