Inno ai formaggi italiani

I love cheese. I think that's one thing Italy has going for it. I rant and rave about things that irk me about Italy often with my American friends...sounds like such a bad traveling habit, especially as Americans. But I guess I do it in defense of my own identity as an American which has only exposed it's timid head now that I am here. I remember Giovanni telling me when he was in California that he never thought twice about being Italian before living in the US, after which it really became part of his identity, or had to be while he was living there.

There are a lot of Italians who refer to the US in a knowing way, just as there are Americans who are certain that they can categorize Italians, Jamaicans, Japanese people, and so forth. I think it's comforting to feel certain that we understand some unknown corner of the world, to be able to put a label there and not think much further beyond that in day to day affairs. But when confronted with the Italians who explain to us, coming from the US, that you see there is just so much culture in Italy, and really it's the best country in the world in terms of art history, and really there's a different notion of tradition here, and a different concept of family here. We understand you, US citizens, we accept you, and we forgive you, but look around and know that you have stepped into a country with real history, real culture, and real cuisine. Not all of them give me this impression, but I hear snatches of these thoughts on tours, in classes, from friends. It has pushed me to reconsider the idea of American culture, and I believe that we do have culture, and it differs between northern California and southern California, the East and West coasts, the South and the North, between rural areas and urban centers, but it exists!

But I won't complain about the cheese here. There's mozzarella di bufala, which I've described in detail already. There's stracchino, a gooey, white cheese that doesn't float my boat. It's better version is squacquerone, great with arugula on piadinas, a flat bread like a tortilla that gets folded in half and filled with deliciousness. There's robiola, a soft cheese similar to whipped cream cheese with a simple, fresh flavor. There's also fontina and caciotta and provola and gorgonzola (gross!) and regular mozzarella and emmenthal (Swiss) and parmigiano and grana and pecorino and fresh ricotta and aged ricotta. And there are more that I have yet to discover!

Giovanni is back in Italy! He arrived Monday and we went to see Ben Harper in concert that very night. I liked Ben Harper before, but I confirmed my love for him by seeing his performance. He changes that scary mob mentality that sometimes emerges at concerts to positive energy with his great lyrics and his stage presence and his message. It's great to have Giovanni back because I'm speaking more Italian than ever and because he makes great piadinas and because, well, he's my boyfriend and I like him.

My classes are marching onward in a scary direction. I still can't imagine myself articulating even one intelligent sentence about the lectures I've seen so far at the oral exam. I have until December to change that to 15 minutes worth of intelligent, original, and informed sentences in Italian. Minchia!! I don't know how that will happen.

I'm getting up at the buttcrack of dawn to go swimming outside of the city tomorrow. Until next time...

Clothed in Santa Cruz = Stranger in a Strange Land

I realized exactly what it's like to be here. It's like wearing my clothes while watching the naked run for the first rain at Santa Cruz. Even though I've always learned that wearing clothes is what is normal, it only took 20 minutes of watching the naked run freshman year to start feeling out of place, embarrassed because all my parts were covered, like a disgusting member of the bourgeoisie in a society where being clothed is a sign of privilege or unjust acquisition of wealth. That's a little what it's like to be here, knowing so certainly that I'm normal and that this place is foreign but everyday seeing that a huge majority of Italians think that they are normal and slowly, frighteningly, beginning to feel like I'm the foreigner and that this place is normal but I'm the one out of place.

Sometimes I really like Italians in general and other times they all (really the whole country of them) annoy me. Then I realize that what this year is doing for me is making me unable to think of Italians as a set anymore. I can't really think of Americans like that, having known so many of so many different political, social, personal, sexual, economic persuasions. Italians will become impossible to categorize anymore.

Classes have started. I wanted to go home on Monday morning after my first class...home to Santa Cruz to just pick up where I left off there. I panicked. I will have to use different strategies to perform well this year than at home, like studying for example, and living comfortably knowing that I don't understand a great percentage of what I'm hearing. I tried out contemporary italian lit, dialectology, comparative constitional law, and applied linguistics. Today is the patron saint of Bologna day (San Petronio) so I have a day of leisure this first week. Tomorrow the search for classes continues.

Luckily I am making a lot of American friends. I thought I would resist that tendency to gather with my own people abroad so I could push myself to integrate and assimilate. But I think resisting would deprive me of the valuable experience of making friends abroad with really interesting people. My anxieties and reflections and experiences take on depth and new layers when shared with other young Americans who are also here. Granted, I am lucky to already have Italian friends, so the transition into living here has been relatively a smooth one.

I visited Genova and saw my very first Italian friend Cecilia this past weekend, with whom I spent the summer in Italy four years ago. Genova is on the sea, and no cars or vespas go into the historical city center. The air is actually breathable, and the coastal terrain gives the city a rolling, uplifted feeling. It's the birthplace of pesto and focaccia and Columbus (though I'm reading a book right now Lies My Teacher Told Me, which calls into question Columbus' genovese roots. It says letters he wrote show that he didn't speak Italian well even when writing to people from Genova. "Some historians believe he was Jewish, a converso, or convert to Christianity, probably from Spain." (James Loewen, p. 54)) I didn't take many pictures, but I will return!

Now I'm off to celebrate the great personage that was San Petronio...uh, who? Food, people, Piazza Maggiore, yay!