12:20 AM GST, 2.21.2008

Sleeping has become something of an issue here – I can’t do it when I want to and find myself doing it relatively frequently when I don’t. To wit: I awoke at 5:15 or so this morning to a beeping sound in my room which I was unable to locate. I couldn’t sleep so I got up and worked. Then this afternoon at around 2:30, I crashed and didn’t wake until 4:30. Taking a nap is fine if you want to, but I had hoped tonight that I could go to bed at a decent hour and thus have a chance of sleeping through the night for the first time since the first day I was here.

On the up side, I made a surprisingly edible (if simple) dinner out of a small red onion (it was moldy but I cut off the moldy bits), a bit of pasta and some sauce. Tomorrow's dinner will be entitled: Polenta II - The Revenge.

I ought to go – I need to work on my Italian before bed. My plan for improving my Italian involves studying every night, especially just before bed in the hopes that while I sleep I will be unconsciously making some kind of progress. So far (admittedly a sample size of 2 nights isn’t that great) it hasn’t shown any substantial results.

Tomorrow I go back to the archives with a couple of phrases and vocabulary words I spent some time working over this evening in the hope that I’ll be able to explain to someone what I am doing there. My new strategy (since trying to explain broadly didn’t go well) is simply to state in the most specific terms what I am looking for this trip. Pirates. And exiles. But mostly pirates. Arr.