Rain! Temperatures below 85! Less humidity! Rejoicing!

Today was pretty mellow. It rained for much of it, including some torrents for a while, which were fun to wake up to. Not being able to fall asleep until around 4 and sleeping till noon was not so cool, though. My sleep cycle is still way out of wack, which is not helped at all by the noisy cars and scooters and ambulances going by here at night. I'm used to relatively sound-proof - or at least just plain quiet - sleeping environs, and my body is somewhat shocked by the change in audio-scenery, along with many other things. I can sleep through loud noise, as long as it's relatively consistent. Which this road at night is not. Even exhausting myself out hasn't really helped much, it just makes me sleep for a bloody long time once I finally make it. Grrr. Hopefully the start of classes will force my body to get back into a better pattern.

Beyond waking up super late, I spent the afternoon reading various things - an interesting book on the history of the Egyptian city of Alexandria my mom lent me, a guidebook on Ferrarese history (in Italian, of course), and some review of Arabic and Japanese. I need to find some way to be living in Italian without losing my Arabic and Japanese, and preferably gaining enough to pass out of the fall term in one or the other of the two, which is a rather daunting task.

This afternoon, I did try to go out to go food shopping, but found that almost everything was closed several hours earlier than normal, and ending up walking all the way to the castle before finding a restaurant that was actually open for dinner and didn't serve just pastries or icecream. None of the bars (which serve real food here), cafes or food stores near me were available, which was very odd. Maybe due to a Catholic Saturday evening service? At least I got good food out of it, by going to the same restaurant Leah and I went to last night, for the same price as much lower quality food (although still decent) from the nearest bar. Giant tortellini filled with mashed pumpkin with a thin meat sauce. Subtle flavors, and quite delicious. (Cappellacci con zucca al ragu' I think it was called). Leah told me it's a speciality of the area, apparently, too. Oh well - I will attempt to go food shopping tomorrow or Monday. Oo, and Orientation starts on Monday! I'm glad to have had this time to just settle in and become a bit aware of the area before anything regulated, but am also looking forward to learning what life in an Italian univeristy is like (since I am trained down to the core to be a student, after all), as well as having expectations and a routine again. Or at least as much as I can have a routine for anything in Italy.