insomnia and legalities

The plague of insomnia...in Gabriel Garcia Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude", it was a cause of great fear, and all the servants fled. Highly contagious, it soon infected the entire town. At first it was the most wonderful thing, all the things that everyone could accomplish! Before long they understood how terrible a thing it really was...or they would have if they could remember anything.

In Amelié, a young Amelié thought that her comatose neighbor was actually getting her whole life's sleep in one go. After that she could stay awake day and night!

Mornings, days, I want to sleep. I'm tired. Nights I come alive, even if I've not slept in a day or two, it's forgotten. Or, if I know I'm tired, it grows on me like an increasingly irritating pain rather than something to ease the transition to sleep.

Last night I was home by midnight and fretful until sunrise. After a two hour nap this morning I got up, got ready and was ready for a nap which I refused to take. After all, I have things to do, papers to fill out and legal things to sort in order to get to Maldives.

Raquel met me in Plaza Espa?a to see about getting a police record. Can you do that on a tourist? The answer, "No." At first all of the officials were mystified and finally thought I ought to go to the American embassy, but just to be sure, I should talk to everyone at every counter in the Commisary before proceeding. The final counter was a small office around the side where a lovely young woman gave us directions to the American Embassy, which is up the mountain. Lovely.

Up the mountain on the rich people's train, we took every wrong turn we could out of four possible directions and finally set off down the right way and followed the American flag. When arrived, it was to a sign- hours Monday - Friday 9am -1pm. It was closed! sigh

Well, at least tomorrow I can go easily without questions.

Next order of business was to secure passport size photographs and copies of a document from my email. Would you believe that the first FOUR internet cafes' printers were down! Number 5 had no internet in it's internet cafe. (I wished him luck.) Number six charged me 2 Euros for half an hour and the four printed pages. Actually, it was 1 Euro whether I was on for 2 minutes or 1/2 hr, so here I sit...

Now to mail the thing.

Wish me luck!