Guess what! Only nine weeks to go as of last Tuesday! Still ages really, but when I think back to when I’d been here for two months and had ten to go... gosh.

A LOT has happened since my last email (yeah I know I always say that...)

THE NEW ME
I've been given a Balanta name... Almamu wanted to give me one, but before he could, one of the guys, Timbana, (Tim, our first language teacher) gave me some options...

• Diana:'shy'
• Wingaba:'don't hate me'
• Ntchomba: 'I will not allow it'

But those ones didn't thrill me at all!  Fortunately Almamu arrived just in time before they decided to name me Wingaba forever (it sounds waaay to much like a character from Star Wars for my taste, not to mention the meaning!)... and gave me Kusuma, which means Happiness :-)

Hello hello hello hello!

I am so very happy to be emailing you!  It has been SO hard to not be able to communicate, although a lovely random man with an internet-capable cellphone let me use it to read some emails a few weeks ago... I'm sorry to say this will be a bit epic, so for all you skim readers out there, be warned.  But I will try and do the old 'headings' thing so you can just skip to the good bits.
 
Esperanca English Club
So we have now been teaching for five weeks... and have one and a half weeks to go before our three week break.

So...  What happens if you speak Kiriol at school?  You get beaten 10 times.  Yes that's right, you can only speak Portuguese or suffer the consequences.

FOUR HOURS AND COUNTING
That's how long we sat on log benches for church on Sunday!  They do a long service once a month, and fast, and pray, but the benches are upsidedown half-logs so it's curved, with no back, and VERY hard to sit on for more than a few minutes!  I never thought I'd say this, but big butts are starting to seem very desirable - either that, or we need a cushion!

Bon dia!

I've been thinking about all of you heaps and continuously wishing I could share what I'm seeing and experiencing with many of you who would appreciate different types of things...

Anyway, here goes...

Here's how it works: Ingore is an hour and 10min away from Bissau by taxi, or an hour and a half by kadonga (squashy bus that lets people off every 100m to buy a goat or pick up something from their cousin's house etc).

Titus and Poppy are coming to Bissau tomorrow, and when we go to Ingore with them after lunch we will be shown how to make the trip on our own. Anna says it's easy and you can't get lost if you give them our address but she doesn't know me so we shall see!

we, you (plural)...

I hate grammar!  Kiriol grammar is supposed to be easy but I am up to my eyeballs in pronouns and predicates and sentences with every word starting wíth ''b''.

Did I mention it's HOT??

This weather give the word ''clammy'' a whooooole new meaning.  Basically you wake up, sit up, and start actively sweating.  You don't really stop until you go to sleep, and then you are passively sweating.

My pores are thanking me for coming to GB.  I could feel them opening up and sucking in all the hot humid air the moment I stepped off the plane.  I just hope they exercise some discernment and don't let anything in that shouldn't be there!

The official said it was 26 degrees but I think his thermometer was broken.  By my personal reckoning it was at least 49 degrees.

So I have decided to inundate you all with emails from airports, so you get lulled into a false sense of security and completely overlook the fact that once I´m in GB I might not be able to email for ages.

Hope it works.

I´m in Lisbon!  And SO TIRED.  Tried to sleep sitting up at a cafe table for a while but it didn´t really work.  I have a six hour transit time so it´s now I wish I had been able to load more books on my ipod!  And I tried to practice my Creole but fell asleep at ´How are you?´