Getting up at a decent hour does have its perks. Instead of rolling over and going back to sleep when I awoke at 5:15AM this morning, I rolled over and couldn’t go back to sleep. Yesterday, this resulted in oversleeping. Today, it resulted in an early morning Italian vocabulary session as I mentally walked myself through the errands I need to run today (locating the Italian school I’m going to tomorrow, finding the Archivio di Stato, buying a plug adapter for the computer so I can give the hotel’s back, buying a SIM card for the phone so I can call and receive calls) and looking up any words or phrases I couldn’t live without in trying to write half of an imaginary conversation with an imaginary person in Italian. After this, I played somewhere between 6 and 12 games of Hearts on the computer, showered up and headed downstairs, only to find I was the first person down to breakfast in the morning.

For breakfast, I have had (as I try to type, read emails, and eat) a couple of pieces of bread, a croissant, a fruit-filled pastry, a cup of yogurt, an apple, and a glass of blood orange juice. None of these were especially spectacular, but the side of optimism that comes free with an unexpected breakfast is always appreciated.

I’m not sure if I have the energy for a soccer match tonight, given that I ought to marshal my energies for starting work properly tomorrow. Plus there are probably 6,000 words or so I should think about looking up to prepare myself for trying to explain myself and my project to the helpful (hopefully) inhabitants of the Archivio di Stato. On the other hand, who knows how I'll feel after seconds?