It's so good to be home! There's no feeling like the strangeness of returning to the house after a month of sleeping in a different bed and eating out every night. Our living room is about the same square footage as a 20-bed (or more) room in an albergue. We can make our own meals and the computer works without putting a coin in first. My bed is actually long enough and much more comfortable than the bunks. It still takes some getting used to, though.
My walk from Arzua to Santiago was fairly uneventful, but no less enjoyable. Whether because I was tired or had a subconscious resistance to finishing the Camino, I didn't walk as fast as usual and took time to make a cross out of sticks and put it in a fence by the highway next to hundreds of others. The trail was surrounded by more and more roads and modern buildings and I finally was engulfed in the suburbs around Santiago. The way through the modern city was better marked than Dad/Wick had led me to believe, but I think that was because I was in a (very) little more aware state of mind coming in than he was. My entrance into the plaza by the famous west facade of the cathedral was documented (of course) before my reunion with Mom/Helen and Dad/Wick. I stayed a while to take in the enormous and ornate west facade before walking around inside for a cursory tour of the magnificent altar and other wonders. After that we went to the Pilgrims' office to get my Compostella, which was a pretty easy process (pay three Euros, write down your basic information on a sheet for the file, and roll the certificate up to put in the tube.) Mom/Helen and Dad/Wick led me to our hotel, where I got cleaned up and put on the shorts and tshirt and fresh underwear they'd bought me, then we went to dinner at an Italian place (shockingly enough, Italian food tastes exactly the same in Spain as it does in the U.S.)
I know earlier I said I was going to go to Finisterre the next day, but that night as I was getting ready for bed I felt a sense of completion. I was finished. Instead, I spent the extra day in Santiago. Mom/Helen and Dad/Wick were both "over" the city, having been there for a week already, but they showed me around to the countless cheesy tourist gift shops and the good places to get icecream (the icecream there is phenomenal.) Having had only my Bible and guidebook to read for over three weeks, I was starving for some literature, so we found a bookstore that had books in English (I've read almost four novels since then. So good to have something else to read again!) We also found a place to do our laundry, so the other people on our flight home would be able to breathe. Sometime that afternoon Dad/Wick began to feel the first symptoms of upset stomach and intestines, which also began to affect Mom/Helen the next day to the point that neither could bring themselves to eat much. That night, however, their plans to have dinner at the cool seafood place with me were foiled when for some reason it was closed.
The next day we spent pretty much as the first. We walked around a really pretty park near our hotel for a bit in the morning and had lunch at a Kurdish falafel/shawarma place in the old section of the city. It was really good and brought back memories from our trip in Israel, so we ate there for dinner too. By then both my companions were suffering from this mysterious stomach bug or whatever it was, though neither thought (as I did) that it was from the seafood place, since food stuff usually happens almost immediately. The only reason I figured it was the seafood place that caused it was that it was the most recent place they'd eaten that I hadn't, and it may have been Providence that kept us from eating there again, thus saving me from the same sickness (now that it's lasted so long, I think they agree.)
The next day of travel was gruelling, more so for Mom/Helen and Dad/Wick because they were already feeling so bad. It was once again a sleepless flight for me the whole trip. I was painfully tired by the time we landed in Jacksonville, but my excitement to be so close to being home gave me a second wind as we collected our luggage (all bags arrived smoothly and were among the first out at baggage claim.) As I said before, it was a strange feeling coming into the house, but I quickly dished out some soup my grandmother had left in the fridge, for the meals on the plane were hardly substantial.
Since then we've been adjusting to the time zone and catching up on all the sleep we lost. Mom/Helen got her foot X-rayed and it was officially diagnosed as a stress fracture, so she got a foot-splint thing. She and Dad/Wick suffered a few more days from their sickness, but got some prescription antibiotics, so they're finally feeling better. As for me, I've adjusted pretty well, except for Saturday afternoon when I felt an unexplainable restlessness. I couldn't set myself to any entertainment or task or excercise. I realized later that my brain was still functioning for a nomadic lifestyle. Now, however, I'm fully recovered and back to occasionally zoning out like normal.
Thanks to all of you who read this. I hope you enjoyed it, because we certainly enjoyed writing it (almost as much as doing the stuff we were writing about.) I hope we entertained you all and presented the lessons we learned well enough that you all might benefit as well. God bless you all!
In Him,
Hunter
P.S. Although this is the last entry in the log, keep checking back during the next couple weeks, because now we're adding pictures. Scroll through and you'll see we've already added a fair number to go along with our logs.
Stubble Update: Neck and chin are thick and dark. Chops are not dark, but are adequate. Mustache darkening and no longer embarassing, as long as the rest of the facial hair is there to keep it company. Not to the stage where it can stand alone, yet, though.
