Portuguese progress...

Its nearly six weeks now since moving to Principe and with the help of Ale (said with soft emphasis on the 'e') and Google Translate, my Portuguese is coming along. Zachary and a little girl called Chael have a daily, morning play-date and Ale (Chael’s nanny) gives me a few Portuguese pointers in between the playing. My vocabulary is definitely improving, but making sentences is more difficult as the word order is quite different to English. Never the less, Ale and I are more able to understand each other now, as her English and my Portuguese vocabulary grow. Though many times we just laugh because neither of us can grasp the other’s meaning! Zachary has picked up a few Portuguese words and each morning when the cleaning ladies come to the room he tries to copy them and say, “Bom dia” (Good morning). This really charms them and he is very popular. Chael speaks a bit of both languages but is generally pretty shy and quiet, although squeals, “Bebe, Bebe, Bebe!”(baby) when she spots Zachary running around the resort.

Zachary’s favorite activity is pushing Chael in her stroller along the resort’s hedge-lined paths, while Ale guides the stroller to steer and prevent accidents. This can carry on for an hour, much to the amusement of onlookers and guests. He gets quite rosy-cheeked and his baby-fine hair sticks to his hot head. After this, he is exhausted from the heat and humidity and he’ll just lie on the floor in our room, with his head on a cushion, watching Ceebeebies for a while to recover. Zachary also has fun playing on the beach with Chael, where he loves drawing number “ones” in the sand with a stick or pushing his hand down crab holes. We have stopped the later as the crab holes are large, likely reflecting their inhabitants’ size.

Today Zachary is teething and has not yet had a day nap. It’s now 2.47pm and I am feeling the lack of my usual two hours of silence and relative freedom. He’s had a combination of Neurofen and Ponstan but to no obvious effect, poor little man and poor me...