Update Three: My First Week in Sergipe

My trip to Aracaju was very stressful. After my trip to the Amazon I spent a night in a hotel in Manaus, before my flight at 6am the next morning. I set an alarm on the alarm clock in my room for 3am, but apparently, in my bleery-eyed state I managed to set it for 3pm instead, and so I woke up at 4.30am, with just an hour and a half to get ready and packed and get to the airport for my flight. Panic!! Somehow, despite a very long and slow-moving check-in cue at Aracaju airport, I made it to my flight on time. I then had to endure a 2 hour flight to Belem, where my plane made a 40minute stop-over before continuing to Fortaleza, where I changed to a flight to Aracaju, which also had a stop-over at Recife. What a day! At 3pm I finally arrived at Aracaju airport, Sergipe, where my new supervisor Fabio met me.

In Aracaju Fabio had arranged for me to stay with one of his students, Lorena, a lovely Brazillian girl who unfortunately speaks about as much English as I speak Portuguese, which isn't much! She lives with her sister Mirella and her friend Polly, who speak a little more English, but still very little. I could tell I was in for an interesting 3 weeks.

My first few days in the lab at Universidade Federal de Sergipe (UFS) were quite slow, just getting accustomed to the ants (which are absolutely huge!) and observing their behaviour. I met an American couple called Hans and Becky who have provided some much needed company and English conversation. On Friday night Polly took me out to meet some of her friends and go out for a few drinks, which was nice but I was far to tired to really enjoy it, and trying to understand portuguese is difficult even when there isn't a band playing in the background!

Saturday Polly and I went to the beach in Aracaju, which was lovely. The beach is quite popular with the locals and so quite busy. Although the water is very clean, it has a brown-ish tint to it caused by sediment from the nearby Rio Sergipe. In the evening I was invited by Lorena to the 1st birthday party of her cousin. The party was beyond belief. The main room was covered in balloons shaped into flowers, and huge fairy posters and statues, and the focal point was a giant, 3 tiered pink cake. Outside was what is most probably the entire selection of kids toys and games available in Brazil. It seems that Lorena's entire extended family attended the event, and her sister told me later that it had cost 10,000 Real (about £3000!).

On Sunday I had planned to go with Hans and Becky by bus to a beautiful beach, about 45 minutes away from Aracaju. Their friend had told them that the bus left the station at 11am every day. Apparently every day doesn't include Sunday, however, as when we arrived at the bus station we were told that the bus had left at 8am. The interesting thing about Brazil is, that nobody seems to know the entire story - the people at the bus station in Aracaju had no idea what time the bus would be returning from the beach, they only knew what time it left! Instead we went to the same beach I had been to on Saturday, where I proceeded to get very sunburnt, and as I would later find out, give myself mild heat stroke.

Monday I was supposed to go out with the lab technician, Dantes, to collect some Dinosaur ant colonies. But due to aforementioned sun stroke, I instead spent the day sleeping and trying to feel better. By Tuesday I had managed to recover and went out at 8am to collect more ant colonies. The dinosaur ant colonies can be found at the base of trees, entangled in their roots, in areas of relatively sparse tree cover. The result is that in order to collect a colony, you have to spend several hours with a spade and a pick-axe digging up the colony in the unrelenting Brazillian sun with almost nothing to provide any shade. Its almost as if they were trying to make it difficult. The ants don't send out any foragers during the day because of the heat, so externally the nest looks like a small heap of earth at the base of a tree. I have no idea how anybody can find and accurately identify these colonies, but apparently Dantes had the know-how, because we returned in the afternoon with another 2 colonies.

Aracaju is a very strange place. Major modern developments in the city

have been relatively recent, and so although there are skyscrapers, they are often surrounded by dirt roads, and it is one of the few places in Brazil where horse-and-carts are still used to any great extent. The people here are very friendly and energetic though and they are making me feel quite at home (or as much at home as is possible when you're 5000 miles from it!)