Dirt caked into my fingers that no amount of scrubbing seems to get out

So today I got up in anticipation of going into Sahagun with Paddy and Una, however when I came into the kitchen ready to go Paddy said we'd have to wait until tomorrow to go as he needed to be home at noon to go over and see the town physician to get a prescription. It seems this doctor makes a stop in Moratinos to see anyone that needs his attention once a week or so. Things like that make up the list of reasons that I love living here! So no worries, we were both up and decided to walk Una to San Nicolas and back so she could rampage about her hare field. We stopped by The Alamo to drop off some laundry and James, Marianne, les enfants, and Africa showed up shortly after. We took Africa with us on our walk. She's so excitable, being still less than a year old. She wanted to chase after Una and play, but we were leery of her going off and not coming back so we kept her on the lead (English for “leash”).

We got back and headed over to The Alamo again, and James was up to his elbow in a bucket of adobe mud, mixing it with water and straw. He asked if I wanted to help, so I stuck around to learn a new (and exciting, and honestly kind of fun) skill. So now I can add “Can mix and mud walls with adobe.” Brilliant. So the mixture is 5-6 scoops of the sifted dirt (remember James' Earth seasoning? Yea, that.) to about 2 liters of water, and then just as much straw as it takes to be able to separate a handful of the mixture with your hands and see the straw.

We took a couple tubs of it upstairs and in the same fashion as one might plaster a wall, we spread it over an existing layer of adobe. After it dries it cracks, and so then you add a layer of thinner mud mix, just water and dirt this time, and let that dry. Then to finish it you use a piece of smooth plastic to “buff” it in a sense, which smooths it out and makes the pebbles and straw pieces stand out from the rest of the dried mud. It's actually quite cool, and extremely therapeutic. Kind of like coloring or to more of a degree finger painting. The only thing is, that now where my hands were dry and had small cracks the mud has worked into them, and now after scrubbing my hands several times I can't get them back to their normal color. I suppose it'll work itself out eventually as the skin cells replace themselves.

While working today we had some pilgrims come through as well. A really wonderful lady from South Africa who was walking the Camino, and thought the work being done at The Alamo was just fantastic. She took a picture of us mixing adobe. Then another young lady came by and was talking to Marianne and I detected some of her Spanish sounded like she was speaking it with French pronunciation, and sure enough she was from France! She's from a small town near the Alps called Gap. She said I absolutely have to visit the area as the mountains are just fantastic. She showed me pictures in a book she had with her. I very well may, as that is just across the border from Italy where I plan on crossing into France later in my trip.

So after doing that for a while we all disbanded, the James' heading home for lunch, and Sebastien and I coming back to the house to have a bite to eat as well. Paddy had taken the leftover beef stew and added more things to it to make a rough version of his garlic soup which we had with some hunks of stale bread. Poor people food he says, though he remarked that the really poor people would just have stale bread and what boiled (ha ha) down to garlic water. Yum.

After lunch I decided a siesta was in order, so I crawled into bed with my iPod and listened to some more of Return of the King, falling asleep at some point and then waking up later to realize I'd slept through part of the story. I found where I last recalled listening and paused it to listen again later, and then fell asleep.

I got up after an hour and a half or so and headed back over to The Alamo with Paddy. James was working on sanding down a new table he's constructed, but the sander wasn't cooperating and probably will need to be replaced. Other than that it's going to be a nice table. The delivery men also brought the rebar for the foundation of the new wall and the men with the concrete truck came and poured the foundation. Amazing, but like Reb said, when things happen they tend to happen all at once. As soon as she had the opportunity though Una pranced across the wet cement, so Paddy had to take her to wash her feet off and Sebastien smoothed it back out. One of the neighbor's dogs, a tiny yappy thing, came prancing over and sniffing around as well. James scared it off, and then we joked that if it were to step on the cement it might sink in and all we'd see the next day would be it's tail. James warned the neighbor to lock the dog up over night because he didn't want to be responsible for it's disappearance!

I headed back after about 45 minutes or so to start making dinner. The plan was to make hamburgers with some ground meat in the freezer, baked potatoes, and a salad. We lit a fire out in our little makeshift grill and let it burn down. I grilled some onions, and then put the burgers on. When I came out to check them though they were falling apart and slipping through the wire, so I quickly scooped up the majority of the meat onto the plate and took it in and just cooked it all in a pan. It was nice still because the meat had red pepper and onion diced up in it. Grilled onions are really tasty too.

After dinner we sat around in the kitchen for a while and I finished a letter to my grandparents. Heading to bed earlier than usual because tomorrow we're going to walk to Sahagun so I need to be up early. Bonne nuit!