People

There´s a German/Austrian woman waiting on me to get off, and I´m in an Austrian hostel with just about all German speakers. So I´m going to keep it short and just talk about the people I´ve had the pleasure to meet along the way. The American was only the first of many new acquaintances yesterday. I met the Irish girl I alerady mentioned, a French Canadian who spoke very good English, another couple of girls from Quebec or France who gave me the leftovers of their pasta-based meal and a glass of wine when I opened the bottle for them. Today I met an Italian who appears to be quite the womanizer but is also a very interesting world traveler. He kept talking about the¨"energy" of people and of the Camino itself, and complimented me on my "rhythm," which I think meant my pace, for he walked with me for a couple of miles before I had to take a break and he saw a couple of young women he had met the night before and walked with them. When I got to Los Arcos (that makes this about a 20-kilometer or 12-mile day for those of you keeping track) I waited about half an hour with two large, older, German men who shared half a banana and half a salted tomato with me and then graciously waved away my offer of peanuts and chocolate. Shortly after i checked in I met a Korean who just quit her job because it was pretty much taking over her life and she thought God was telling her to get out of it. She´s been going very slowly because her boot inserts were too big and gave her some pretty raunchy blisters. I´m going to see if she´ll let me use my blister kit on them later, but hopefully she will at least accept a prayer (she´s Catholic, as is 20% of South Korea, praise the Lord!) and some chocolate.
In other news, before I close, I FOUND RAISINS! I know that´s probably not as exciting to you all as it is to me, but I am as clogged as Chewbacca´s shower drain, so I could really use some help to keep me regular. Also, this means I pretty much have a full trail mix at my disposal, which means I can really start saving money but not compromising my health too much. (My belly is beginning to shrink, I think, but my pants still fit so I´m not too worried.) Anyway, I´m going to give this nice lady the 12:00 minutes left on the timer for whatever she has to do on the computer. God bless!