I hope this note finds you well. It's only 1:15pm here and my eyes are extremely heavy. I feel like dropping dead asleep. Tomorrow will make two weeks of being on the mainland and it's beginning to take its toll. Uncomfortable nights, long work days, travel, and not enough drinking water has its price. I wish I could just sleep for a whole day, which is what I hope to do when I return to my bush house in West Liak next Thursday.

In spite of being dog dead tired, I have just completed a four day stay at the Parascos family home in Awayama village here on the mainland. For the first time now, I have seen a better view of the beautiful mainland. Misima Island is indeed beautiful but I didn't realize how lovely the mainland is. Alotau is a coastal town and is not considered a village. So, when we left Alotau and began our truck ride over the mountain range to the north coast, I was once again captivated by the beauty of this place. Misima is extremely mountainous and the lay of the land is vertical, only peaks and troughs, except right on the coastline. Here on the mainland there are these beautiful flat grasslands that reminded me more aesthetically to the way we imagine areas in Africa to be like.

Fun Facts of Life in the Bush:

Things to be ready for at night when you are out at night going to the bathroom: frogs and snakes. These are the night features of the mainland that we do not have on the island.

I was eating a lovely dinner and bit into fish and really injured another tooth on a fish bone. Now I have two teeth on the upper row that are injured. This new one though is not on a dead tooth like the first one and so it was extremely painful. I will need to see a dentist straight away upon my return home to Oakland.