A Conversation With a New Friend

Mom and I explored Eirexe a bit more yesterday afternoon, which mostly meant walking down to the old church and looking at the graves. We discovered the tombstones of two young boys, 8 and 9 years old from the same family who died within a couple of months of each other in 1920. I assume it must have been Spanish Flu, which was a pandemic in 1919-1921. We also discovered what appeared to be the grave of some relative of our hostess (whose name is Cruz) at the pension, but the death date was 1983, and the age 18. I guessed it must have been Cruz' older brother. Sure enough, Dad was in conversation with Cruz' father and mentioned that they had lost a son to a drunk driving accident.

Cruz was working in her garden that afternoon, and she invited us to have a cup of coffee and she sat down and talked to us about her work and opening the pension and the town and how things are in Spain. It was a delightful conversation, and when Cruz mentioned that she wanted to learn English, we told her that she would need to come to Southern California to learn it. She has never travelled. She also mentioned that the house where they were handing out coffee is owned by an evangelistic group, some of whom stay in the pension. She mentioned the leader of the group had given her a book he had written so she showed it to us. It turns out the gentleman in question is the European Director of Campus Crusade for Christ, based out of Barcelona.

The conversation with Cruz, my other experiences yesterday as we walked, and Andy Wall's comment has got me thinking about hospitality. I used to be pretty good at that sort of thing, but in the last several years I have gotten out of the habit. I am going to do something about that when I get back to the States. It doesn't matter that I don't think my house is nice enough, or clean enough, or that my cooking is not good enough. What's important is the act.

The news here is all about the problems in the EU economies and the potential downgrade of the US credit rating. I don't see how the powers that be in Brussels can even contemplate Letting the Euro blow apart, but at some point, France and Germany are going to run out of money (and patience) for dealing with the rest of the EU. I am not sure what to think about the US situation, having been out of the loop for at least a month now, but there is no doubt that our government needs to rectify the situation immediately. A potential downgrade of the US credit rating goes against everything I've been taught (am am teaching) about finance for the last 15 years, and will cause a lot of textbooks to be rewritten, to say the least.

The walk today was long - almost 14 miles. The weather was better, and we will go explore the town of Melide before too much longer. We have three more days and must under 30 miles of walking, and thus, I believe our mindset has shifted from data-gathering to processing and trying to take stock of our journey. We ate physically weary with the accumulated fatigue of walking the better part of 500 miles, but we much to thankful for and much to contemplate.