Sleeping head-to-toe for the time being with Hunter isn't so bad really. Last night, I had a dream that I was sitting on a couch next to this really hot girl with a great body, and I don't know, when I woke up, still in a haze, I saw evidence of that great body right in front of my eyes. I was mired in that strange transitional reality when your visuals are here on earth, but your mind is off in La La Land (by the way, did you know that lala means "sleeping" in Swahili?? Connection? Connection?).

Anyway, almost instinctively I made a move to touch the two mounds directly in front of me ... and realized that I was reaching for Hunter's knees.

"Touch my knees all you want," Hunter said this morning, still half asleep himself as I hazily recounted the chain of events. "Just don't ....."

I can't even repeat his words. His mother obviously did not raise him well.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another sleep story. My malaria pills being just out of reach in my still-MIA bag, the only defenses I have against the harbingers of death that fly in the night are deet and a mosquito net.

Since I'm fresh out of sheep's blood to coat on the door post, I try to coat on the deet every night before I go to bed. You can't ever really count on the net to do the job 100 percent, especially when you're an active sleeper like myself.

Have y'all ever seen those OFF! wipies? They're awesome. I've gone through two containers already, so I guess my mind is used to the routine at this point of rubbing down my body before going to bed. This is good in that I don't forget to do it, bad in that I ...

... sometimes confuse the mosquito net for an OFF! wipie when asleep.

Two times in the last two nights I've woken myself up to the feeling of rough fabric on my face. Sure enough, both times, I've grabbed a hold of the net and starting rubbing down my cheeks, protecting myself from dream mosquitoes.

The only problem is that I totally open the door to real live mosquitoes when I do that.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's like the scene from "Can't Hardly Wait" with the European exchange student sitting out by the pool.

"I ... am a sex ... machine!"

It's always fun, no matter what language you speak, to teach people not as familiar with your mother tongue to say funny stuff.

Last summer in Norway, for example, I thought I was learning how to say "Let's go fishing," but what my 15-year-old temporary sister was really saying was "My penis hurts."

I didn't get quite that inappropriate with my Swahili tutor yesterday, but it still makes me happy to know that I'm spreading "Seinfeld" vocabulary across the globe.

"Dish dish dish..." That is what our tutor, Mr. Shao, uses for "et cetera" or "blah blah blah." Dish dish dish? What the hell is that? It's almost as strange as his alternative to "dish dish dish," which is a really loud sequence of tongue clicks. He honestly sounds like the main character from "The Gods Must Be Crazy" when he busts that out.

From now on, though, he'll sound like Elaine Benes.

"Mr. Shao, this 'dish dish dish' stuff is all wrong. Everyone in America says 'yada yada yada.'"

"Yada yada yada?" He obviously had never heard the term.

"Yeah, Y-A-D-A," he started to write it down on his notes, "Y-A-D-A, Y-A-D-A."

"Thankyouuu verymuch!" Mr. Shao says "thankyou very much" like a runner who gets out of the blocks slow but finishes strong, and he says it in situations that do not require a "thankyou very much" alllll thefreakingtime!

(I typically answer with "You're welcome," while Hunter tries to hold his laughter).

So with "yada yada yada" successfully transferred to East Africa, I think I'm going to make a list of "Seinfeld" terms that I want to implant as well. Here is a rough sketch:

• "shrinkage"
• "close talker"
• "double dipping"
• "soup Nazi"
• "The Summer of George"
• "Independent George/Relationship George"
• "Assistant to the Traveling Secretary"

Can't you picture it now? Mr. Shao, teaching his regular class of kids at the Catholic school in Arusha, and having them practice saying, "You're killing Independent Yusufu!" Or, "What's the deal with wazungu tourists?"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Most of you probably haven't heard about this, but there have been a series of earthquakes in the Kilimanjaro region in the past few days. One of them reached a 6.0 on the Richter Scale, which I think is pretty bad. Our house shook a little, but the brunt of the shock was felt near Karatu, about two hours from here.

Our worst case scenario fear: That Mount Meru, of which we have an oh-so-picturesque view from our village, is about to erase the title "dormant" from its name.

"If that happens," our neighbor Abel was shaking his head and smiling when Hunter brought it up, "we are all done."

What a local newspapear said: The government has allayed the general population's fears by assuring them that the recent tremors are a result of heavy rainfall.

Right. Heavy rainfall = a SIX ON THE RICHTER SCALE.

At least I don't have to make any tough decisions on what I want to be done with my remains. If Meru really does go off, I'll get a free cremation out of it.