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!