The Basement

Every day after school, when I get home my mom immediately grips my arm and escorts me unceremoniously towards a door at the end of the hall. Dragging it open, she then shoves me through the door, leaving me full of blind panic as I fall down the stairs. When the dust settles, I usually either just lie down and stare at my sparse surroundings, or I stand up and brush myself off. Then I work on the welcomed distraction of homework until a measly dinner, normally consisting of a chunk of mystery meat and stale bread, drops down from the corroded trapdoor in the ceiling. After that I have to elude the overwhelming numbers of rats that I share a space with. Sometimes I triumph and stand at uppermost place I can find, the barren, stone bed. Sometimes I suffer defeat at the hands of my inconsiderate roommates and go to bed hungry. At the end of the day, I await the release from my confinement to have a blessed school day.

Mi Casa

During the day, my house can be blindingly white in the sunshine. It has rough, red tiles stacked on the roof. On the inside, my house is somewhat spacious. The tiled floor provides cool relief to tender feet in the summer. There are comfortable chairs spread throughout the house. The rooms are tastefully decorated and provides a homely feel to the whole place. My home is a welcoming and a friendly living space.

The Camino de Santiago

                It took 7 days to walk 124 kilometers. Some friends, my dad, and I took on the Camino de Santiago last summer. I was not looking forward to it. However, once we started out on it, I enjoyed it a lot. I had no idea it would make such a lasting impression on me.

                Every day, we would get up before dawn, so that we would hike in the coolest part of the day. We walked four to six hours a day. It wasn’t as boring as it sounds. We would walk with people who had come from all over the world and have conversations with them as we hiked over mountains, through cities, and underneath soaring treetops. Every day, we would hike anywhere from sixteen to thirty-two kilometers, and see the same people we had walked with before. It developed a sort of comradery between us that was very surprising. At the end of each day, we would collapse at our destinations, exhausted by our hikes.

                When we finally reached Santiago, we were so proud of our accomplishment! It was an amazing feeling. I don’t think that is what I will remember most though. My memories will be of the persistence we had, the friendships we made, and the resistance we showed. Those are memories that I want to make more of the next time I hike the Camino.