Brenda and Andre made us a great first night dinner—a giant salad with tomato, avocado, chicken, beets, walnuts, and Spanish olives. Everyone got to add what they wanted. Dessert was fresh nectarines, dark chocolate, and dried apricots. We’re sitting around outside in a breezeway with perfect temperature, slowly getting to know each other. One of the first things Brenda explained to the group were the coffee choices in the morning. We know how important that is—especially for jet-lagged travelers.
Coffee optionsNow we’re settling down for Brenda’s very first art class. She’s presenting everyone with their very first gift from us—the beautiful art kit she designed and assembled for each of us.This blank book will be transformed into my Camino journal over the course of the next 16 days.This is our little art book, ready for us to write, paint and draw in. The clips are for us to mark special pages we may want to come back to.This is the watercolor palette she hand-filled for each of us—she chose these colors specifically to match the palette of hues typical to the Camino.Yum, yum, can’t wait to dig in. One of the things I love about doing art with Brenda is that I don’t expect to be good at it. It gives me so much freedom to just explore with the joy of a child.This water pen is what we will use to paint with.Before sending us off for bed—there was a lot of jetlagged travelers in the room—she gave us instructions to paint a palette in our notebooks as our first assignment.Everyone dug in. It seems like a relaxing thing to do after flying for a day or two. Our goal as leaders was to keep everybody up until bedtime In Spain.It sure look like everybody was enjoying themselves.My color palette. One of the last things Brenda said as people were punch drunk with jetlag exhaustion was, “One thing watercolor likes to do is party.” I guess we’ll learn what that means in art class tomorrow.
