I´m in Pamplona, a step closer to St. Jean Pied de Port where my Camino officially begins.  I arrived at 11 AM, thinking there would be a bus within an hour or so.  Not so fast!  Turns out the first-next bus is at 6PM, so that has given me time to change some money, wander around the city, and wonder how I am going to walk 500 miles when just strolling around Pamplona has given me a back ache!  I need to re-do my pack again.  Two very crucial straps got cut in transit so I am using a bungee cord (thank you Q. for urging me to pack these) is holding an outer part of my pack together and I think it is riding too low or something.  My back never hurt on my hikes, so this I know this is related to those straps. 

Okay, Pamplona: very small streets!  There is a big sculpture of bulls trampling over a bunch of men.  I would have thought they would make a sculpture which shows the men triumphantly running ahead of the bulls, but no, they went for realism, I guess, which just makes it harder to understand why anyone would attempt this!  Don´t they have to pass the sculpture?!?!!  Okay, so a few of the guys are in front of the bulls, but several are literally UNDER their hooves!  SO I have developed a habit of looking at everyone wondering if they themselves have gone temporarily insane and tried outrunning the bulls.  There are not a lot of guys that look like they could have done it successfully.  Maybe when they were much, much, much younger, but still, doesn´t seem like a particularly adventurous lot.

Before finding this locutoria, (that´s what these telephone/internet places are called), I was wandering kind of aimlessly and thinking that I was feeling lonely.  What is loneliness, I thought, and why would I be feeling lonely?  I realized that it has been hard not to be able to talk to anyone very much.  My Spanish is worse than I thought, I´m afraid.  And contrary to what you hear NOT everyone speaks English.  Why would they, really.  Anyway, I like talking with people and it has been hard to not be able to communicate.  Before I logged on, I called the Pilgrim office in St. Jean and it was such a relief to speak French!  I was so happy to be able to have a conversation that went back and forth, where information was traded, and where I didn´t cringe to hear my pronunciation!  I was thinking about it last night and here´s what I came up with.  For me, languages are like having helpers in my brain.  I picture them like mechanics, or maintenance men.  They are in uniforms, and show up whenever requested.  The ones for French and Italian are big guys, and the one for Spanish is little.  So when I ask for a word in Spanish, the other 2 big guys completely block the little guy out.  Tey are standing there, offering me suggestions of words and/or phrases, while I can tell that the little guy (Spanish) is behind them saying, ´´No! No! That´s not it!´´  I am really looking forward to being in France, even if it is just for a day or two.  And coming in here allowed me to see the most recent guest book entries and comments which totally warmed my heart!  Thank you thank you thank you one and all.  You are ALL on this journey with me.

Before I went to bed last night I thought how nice it would be to have a dream that would really set the tone for this journey.  Something like the dreams that Shirley Maclaine had on her Camino.  A mystical dream, a way-showing dream, a dream of ancestors, possiblities, past life experiences, or future friends I will meet.  Something wonderful.  Well, I did have a dream, and I wrote it down in the dark after I woke up from it.  I didn´t remember it until I pulled out my journal to write something down on the train from Madrid to Pamplona, and I saw my messy writing from the dark of night.  Here it is, but be warned (Mom) that it contains a bad word:  I was being chased, and eventually was cornered by about 3 menacing men.  They finally got me so that I couldn´t escape and they circled me.  I didn´t know what they were going to do to me, but I knew it wasn´t going to be good.  One of them started taunting me, saying ´´ Oh, you want a big spiritual message?  I´ve got your message for you´´ he shouted angrily, bitterly.  ´´ You´re an asshole!´´ he spat out.  ´´You´re an asshole!  You´re just not aware of it.´´   Can you believe it?!?!!   I woke up because I pushed the guy with all my strength and woke up flinging my arms out of the covers, and even then I wasn´t sure whether to laugh or to cry.  I´m so glad that I wrote it down, because I didn´t have a concious memory of it until i saw my scribbles.  I do remember it now, but it took seeing the notes for it to come back.  Some spiritual message, huh!  Any dream interpreters out there?  Are my spirit guides kidding me?!!! What kind of a dream is that to have on the eve of a spiritual pilgimage!  I´ve been laughing about that all day

Heading back to the bus station now.  I will probably grab something to eat although my language problem has made me so shy to enter any establishment where the transaction could get complicated.  I have been using mostly stores where i can pick up or point to whatever I am trying to purchase.  Walking around Pamplona I have seen a lot of clothing stores.  But instead of wanting to buy something, I wonder if I could go in and sell some of my things to them, just to lighten my pack!  I know my clothes don´t weigh much, but something has got to go from my pack, it is just too heavy.  So I am thinking it may be soap.  I can do without soap, and maybe there will be soap in the places I stay.  I think Cale suggested this, and at the time Bridget and I (and were you there, too, Allison) thought that idea was disgusting.  Now, I love it!  But seriously, I have packed and unpacked my backpack a bunch of times.  I don´t know where the weight is coming from , but there is too much of it. 

Sorry if there are typos-the keyboard here is different, so sometimes strange looking things appear.  Buenos dias, amigos!