The Bicycle Tire Thief

Greetings from the/(a) heartland! It feels so....so...AMERICAN here, but in a good way. People say "sow-nah" for "sauna" (okay, that's Finnish) and they grow lots of corn and there's more sky than land though there's plenty of land. I ride over the Mississippi River on my way to work! There are even tornado sirens that let you know you should go down into the basement and wait it out because someone's seen one coming. Tornadoes. The prairie, even.

My internship with PTP has just begun. I even have a PTP t-shirt now, which means that in some fundamental way, I belong. We're organizing a training that starts Sunday for community organizers from London, Tennessee to Oakland, California on framing and messaging, which essentially helps people scrutinize the way they deliver the messages they're trying to spread. It's been a whirlwind of logistics mostly, but it's deeply satisfying to have something concrete and simple to work on before the real fun begins. Which may involve me actually going out on a few limbs, trying things that I haven't done (i.e. who am I to be put in charge of anything relating to "information architecture"?).

I'm considering buying a camera (yes, perennially stingy me!) for all the fabulous things I'm seeing. For now, I can only hint at their allure and mystique.

Bike racks shaped like bikes, a Calatrava-looking bridge, a beautiful mosaic outside of a beautiful co-op grocery store, a street name Minnehaha, and the Mississippi River, of course.

They've realized a dream of mine in this city, the number 2 bike city in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau. A co-worker told me she's not used to biking on trafficked streets because their are so many bike paths! One solution to the perpetual biker-motorist civil war is making two separate --- if not completely, mostly --- sets of roadways. This is unlikely to happen in places where there isn't a great deal of motivation and passion to combat the inertia, the status quo of road domination by vehicles. So my conclusion, of course, is that in Minneapolis and Saint Paul are full of motivated, passionate cyclists. So I'm happy to be here for this reason too. Today, I biked with co-workers H and L to Common Roots for an after-work beer along the Greenway, a bike path built along an old railroad route (the tracks are gone, of course). It's clever because it passes through the important areas of the city but not on the car routes, and it's below the roads, with the train tressels arching above the path. And just in case one hasn't yet had their fill of wild, Minnesota raspberries, the path is lined with them.

So take heed, all you aspiring bike cities: convert your unused railways to bike paths! This does of course attract the aspiring bike thieves. Today, as H and I left the office to grab our bikes and go, a distraught fellow biker with helmet in hand looked sadly at her frame, locked to the stand outside of the office and missing both tires. So I will be bringing my dirty bike with enormous mountain bike tires into the office henceforth.

For now, I'll have to settle for photos I found on the web, but I may just find a camera soon! I bet there's a rowdy bunch of Minn-SP Freecyclers around here.

Je vais dormir!

The Twins

So what I should be doing at the moment...this is always the preface of a blog entry, although soon one of the shoulds will actually be write in a blog (not this one).

I'm writing from Saint Paul, Minnesota, a place I never thought about six months ago.

It's breezy outside, but warm enough for me to need to blow cool breath on my fingers every few words I type. As I began, what I should be doing at the moment is refining the day's intensive anthropological field notes that I took during the first two days of work at my internship at the Progressive Technology Project. These notes are nonexistent but I have made a lot of observations in my first two days. What an exciting place to work! Exciting in a low-key way now. But in a big way if you think architecture and engineering --- the building is completely green, with a rooftop garden complete with a huge solar array, recycled glass ceramic tiles in the bathrooms, low-flow toilets, efficient heating and cooling systems, and a very stylish industrial look (strangely similar to the HQ of my other office in SF).

Instead, I want to reflect on what it's like to be here in MinnesOWta --- this place that is both part of my home country and more foreign to me than at least one foreign country.

First, I'll just give a few key details and elaborate on my experience in a later post. I'm staying with the family of the former director of PTP and they've been extremely welcoming and comfortable with us so far. I say "us" because another Santa Cruzian is here with me, interning with the same org. We have our own rooms in this big, beautiful house that used to be a boarding house, at one time housing 18 people. There are three stories, plus a basement (um...did you say there are tornadoes in Minnesota??). Two kitties come included, Iris and Katie. The worst problem we've encountered so far is TOO MANY RASPBERRIES! And I was sad about leaving all that beautiful fresh produce at the Santa Cruz farmer's market.

That's all for now. So far so good.

O

It's like what Bill Grace said all great leaders have. Obama's sincerity comes from his awareness every time he is in public, but probably when he's in private too, that he is the face of something that is much bigger than him. How else could a leader stand there and not collapse from the love and the pressure and the intensity of such a mass? He has to call upon this awareness often, remind himself of this greater force behind him, constantly recall that he's just a man with a message. But he knows it so well. He knows is SO WELL that he is only there because of the power of us.

There are four days between now and the day we can kiss the last eight years of leadership (or rather, fear conditioning) goodbye forever. I guess we're susceptible to a bit of post-election depression if we think Obama's our magic pill. But whatever happens on election day, the movement has already begun. The beauty of his campaign is that so much has emerged already through the nationwide movement to elect him. It's such a perfect campaign --- he's already won without even winning by stimulating our collective imagination.

When I see McCain speak, I see a generation passing on into history. I see a man out of touch. I see a strategy that's finally failing. Joe the Plumber wants to install environmentally friendly plumbing! Joe the Plumber is starting to realize that black and white is just what you see when you're so far away from reality that you can't distinguish all the beautiful shades of gray. Joe the Plumber is trading in his Red Bull for some Kombucha. Okay, maybe that's last one is just Joe the Plumber from Santa Cruz. But I'm ready to accept the challenge of some real leadership in our country. It means that we who have been unhappy can't be unhappy and inactive anymore because we're done hoping for some legitimate politicizing.

Throw Me a Scone!

There's something kind of amusing and kind of lonely about hanging out with non-native speakers of English all the time. After 2.5 weeks in Ireland, I've finally met my first Irish person yesterday. Giovanni lives with Alexandra (from France) and Louise (from Ireland), but the latter was MIA ever since I got here until this past weekend. I've spent time with a good number of Italians, French people, my one friend in Cork who's Belgian, and even an Omani!

Of course I'm overjoyed at all the cultural enrichment, but do wonder if it wouldn't be a bit enlightening to meet an Irish lass or lad while here on the Emerald Isle. Of course I've seen and heard real, genuine Irish people on the street here in Cork, but without frequenting pubs, and I've yet to be in a pub so far (blast!), it's not easy to chat anyone up on the street. Plus, being acutely sensitive to anti-American sentiments, I am trying to pick up attitudes appropriate to an urban European environment as I normally do when I'm abroad. It doesn't seem to be all that common to chat with someone you're waiting in line behind, or to make much conversation with strangers. I suppose this is true in San Francisco too, but maybe less so.

This weekend, Giovanni and I went to Galway to stay with Giuseppe and Maryam, an engaged couple of non-Irish people who are making their living here. We ate fabulous Omanitalian home-cooking including risotto with a tomato and tuna sauce with Omani curry spices, delicious fluffy pancakes, and sort of Mexican fajitas (guacamole à la Robyn) and enjoyed their company. Sunday we went to County Mayo to Ashford Castle, and after a long walk around the immaculately manicured grounds, our stomachs began to growl. The Italians, the Omani and I circled around the castle that houses a five-star hotel and equally ranked restaurant and caught a glimpse of the basement kitchen through ground-level window. I offered that we should just scurry over to the window and ask for a quick bite to eat or two: "Hey, why don't you throw me a scone!" Ha ha haha haa, and I found myself laughing alone and then beginning to explain my clever little play on words. But such explanations never do justice to humor. I shouldn't have expected them to throw me a bone, so to speak. So I recount it here, in hopes I can share my cheesy line with some native English speaker.

Similarly, later that evening as the four of us were preparing our internationally inspired fajitas in a kitchen too small for two, Maryam complained that Giovanni and Giuseppe were kicking a bottle that was on the floor as we all shuffled around each other in the famous too-small kitchen-and-too-many-people-in-it dance. I quipped, "At least they're not kicking the bucket," and made my own buh-dum-bum-chhhhhh to underline my stupid humor. "What, at least we're not kicking the bottle?" "No...to 'kick the bucket' means....ahhh, nevermind." At least I'm amusing myself.

Far West

I like to see only the silhouettes of people at sunset. They become not full people but shadows of what they were during the day. I can be alone with myself. At most I see a hand hanging out someone's open window as they sit in their vehicle to watch the horizon and the falling sun. Other runners become a pant, a face that flashes back into dusk as quick as it came. People on bikes shrink down to a flashing light and a bike tire whir and they're gone too. Surfers squeege by whose boards reflect a streetlight. My shadow moves in next to me as the car lights pass by. The world seems to simplify into sounds and dark and light. Here at dusk there's no future to worry about tomorrow's phonology assignment and no past. Just me and the fading sun. Me and snippets of conversation from other people's worlds. "The fact is, in my opinion..." Me and my sweat, my knees, my spit. "And she said, 'Don't be shy...'" Me and an expansive ocean-sky. "If Barack Obama is candidate for president...whole new opportunity for the rest of the world..." It's just me and my fading headache. As I turn back towards my house, my shampoo, my dinner, my phonology, the dark part of the sky is left and what remains of today's sun is a pale memory on the horizon behind me. A woman pulls up her underwear after peeing beside her car in the dark. My mind is quieter and as I pass some of the silhouettes again that I passed on the way out I realize I can't avoid recognizing someone. The lights seem brighter as the dark gets darker and it's easier to make out the features of passersby. I suppose my obscurity is less certain too. I even have to shield my eyes like I did from the bright sun today to discern the path across the open field back to my house. Here I am.

Next Stop: Eireann

I'm cold! I'm writing from overcast Cork, Ireland. I'm a bit dazed after a quarter of always having something hanging over my head, of never being able to catch up. I was able to take it in stride and accept that I wouldn't be able to actually catch up, knowing that I was still a good student and that the work I was doing was good.

I was swimming around in future soup a lot during this last quarter, not sure of what to grab on to (a PhD program? But in what subject? A master's? Where though? Should I stay in California? Should I change course from linguistics to equality in education? Would a higher degree linguistics be in line with my values about social justice and equality? Would it separate me from the real world? Could I do anything practical with it?) but thinking it was probably best to grab onto something. In the end, I decided not to apply to graduate school this year. Imagine: for the first time in my life, I will do something that I devise interesting or worthy of looking into rather than just taking the next obvious step that my scholastic career so far has molded me, has indoctrinated me to take. And even that seemed like too gaping a precipice to drop right off of, so I will be turning in one application. It's for Teach For America, a program whose goal is to supplement the deficiencies of rural and urban public schools whose students are years behind in literacy and math standards. It sends students with bachelor's degrees to these communities to become actual teachers for two years. Students like me, with no formal or informal training as teachers, who may have majored in biology or linguistics or history of consciousness as is possible at Santa Cruz or best yet, education. There is an intense and rigorous summer training, followed by two years of classroom practice.

I'm reading a book by the founder of Teach for America, Wendy Kopp, who, like me, was evaluating her future options as a senior a Princeton in the late '80's. She wanted something meaningful to work for rather than to go to a two-year business school just to get rich. I guess it's fair to say I'm not exactly worried that my alternative options are just to go get rich, but I am concerned that they might not be meaningful. Or rather, I think time off doing something real and practical could set the stage for a meaningful degree in something I believe in, and would help me figure out EVERYTHING that I don't know, which is most everything.

Hark, I think I see the sun! And by contorting my body at weird angles, I think I might have spied a tiny corner of blue sky from the window of Giovanni's apartment, one among many in a complex not designed to bring in the little natural Irish lighting that might poke through the clouds now and then. I am reticent to say that this is a dreary city, but suffice it to say that this is a city with friendly people, fighting not to be dreary against the very stiff odds that the omnipotent weather imposes.

This is Day Five in Cork. I have been volunteering half days at the Oxfam Fair Trade shop on French Church Street, and it's been a very good way for me to spend time while Giovanni is at work. It's fair to say I've met more non-Irish people than Irish, but I've met a few of them too. I price and count things that have arrived, I restock the shelves, I work at the cash register (often causing it to stop working when there are more than five people in line), and I drink divine hot dark chocolate from the shop down the way and chat with Esther, the Belgian manager, and other volunteers. Many of the other volunteers are international: French, Italian, etc. Others are Irish, and despite the difficulty I have in understanding many with really broad accents, I'm having fun meeting so many people and actually talking to a few for an extended period of time. It's nice to travel when you can manage to find real opportunities to meet local people.

It's been a quite international experience so far. The first night I arrived, Giovanni and I went to dinner at his friend Giuseppe's house, another Italian who's girlfriend is from Oman. There were also two other couples, the recurring them being Italian male, international female. The other two girls were Dutch and Serbian. It was a lovely evening, especially since the two Sicilians cooked pizza and pasta al forno for dinner!!

I'm going to step out now that the sun has unabashedly begun to shine outside the window. I can't miss the occasion! I would like to see the University of Cork on a day like today. Pictures will be posted soon.

Next week, Giovanni and I will go to West Cork hopefully, and perhaps Kerry, and Wicklow for Christmas. Maybe we'll even make it to Galway before he starts work again!

I only know how to say "buses" and "potato" so far in Irish. I don't know how far that will get me...

Bella Ciao

It's a great moment in the history of the world right now: women are going to be the positive change in the world. And we're going to do it with love. After all, it's women who pay back their loans and who are creating mini-revolutions in peripheral nations. It's women who have been silenced but who are beginning to spotlight the value different kinds of discourses, and present new kinds of dialogues. Women are the innovators: this is true in language use in most societies. It's my understanding that postmodernism shares many parallels with historically feminine ways of conceiving the world: is it not true that there are many truths, that each person has access to multiple ways of conceiving of the world? Ursula K. Le Guin recounts an experience she shared with a group of women discussing theory. One woman said, amidst arguing and verbal jabbing, "Offer your experience as your truth," to which the women markedly shifted their style of dialogue. Le Guin remembers

"When we started talking again, we didn't talk objectively, and we didn't fight. We went back to feeling our way into ideas, using the whole intellect and not half of it...not claiming something: offering something. How, after all, can one experience deny, negate, disprove, another experience?"

And indeed, this is what postmodernism is about, to the extent that I understand it. It's about the lack of an absolute reality outside of our individual perception of it: it means there can be contradictory truths, even for the same individual at different moments, in different circumstances. I wrote about this before, remarking on the strangeness of the fact that if I could have a conversation with myself from one day to the next, or one year to the next about my deepest convictions, I might end up arguing bitterly about TRUTH with my own self!

As Le Guin's "mother tongue", or the language historically associated with women that does not require distance between the speaker and the subject, or the so-called objectivity of the speaker, begins to be reevaluated, revalued in spheres besides the home, there will be a cultural shift, a social change, a transformation. In Le Guin's words, "It is a language always on the verge of silence and often on the verge of song." Not oppressed silence, but a silence that listens, a silence that speaks.

When I hear men talk about feminism with disdain, defensively, I want to have the presence of mind to have a discussion about what good it is doing us ALL. Surely men suffer the imbalance in society as well: the cultural norms that require stoicism and emotionally constipated strength cannot benefit those who identify as men in our world. Of course Le Guin is not silent on this issue: many men aren't allowed to speak this mother tongue, or don't learn to speak it. "At home, to women and children talking mother tongue, they respond with a grunt and turn on the ball game. They have let themselves be silenced, and dimly they know it, and so resent speakers of the mother tongue; women babble, gabble all the time...Can't listen to that stuff."

Amartya Sen wrote a famous essay on the 100 million women that are missing in the world. Sen claims that given equal access to food and healthcare, the ratio of women to men would be 106/100. This is nearly the ratio in many industrialized countries, but it is not because of wealth or so-called "Western" cultural values. It's a matter of the economic empowerment of women, which can take many forms. In matriarchal societies, the ratio tends to be nearer to 106/100, even if the region or nation is poor or non-Western, such as Kerala in India. Amartya Sen won the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998. When women are given the means to become economically independent, there are more women! And it is perhaps necessary that many societies began to recognize women as not just assets to their communities as procreators, but as economic actors who bring home the bacon.

There are a couple of organizations that are empowering individual women by connecting them to donors from wealthy nations. Small donations of $25 can help a woman in Bangladesh or Belize or Uganda start a small business enterprise, and after she pays it back, the money is recycled to help someone else.

Namasté Direct
http://www.namaste-direct.org/index.php
Kiva
http://kiva.org/

Are you with me, sisters? Are you with me, brothers?



The excerpts from Ursula K. Le Guin come from her 1986 Bryn Mawr commencement address. The information cited by Amartya Sen is from the New York Review of books, "More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing", 1990.

Delicata, spaghetti, acorn, butternut...

I rode my bike home today after a long, warm day of classes on campus. The second summer has arrived: in long jeans and with a sweater and scarf in my backpack, I was definitely unnecessarily loaded down.

Coming down from campus I feel like I'm part of the new wave of commuters, or I hope that's what it is. Often there's a fleet of four or five bikes that ride down Bay Street together when I leave campus around 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening, and it's like we have a microtraffic situation next to the two big lanes. We have to watch out for each other. Some fly by others, edging into the right lane of car traffic, donning little white earphones, dodging quickly through a red light if it seems safe enough.

There's nothing like the smells of Santa Cruz to make me remember how alive I am: just today I caught great whiffs of bay leaves, then strong coffee wafting out of a house below Mission followed by a cloud of marijuana that lasted half a block, then eucalyptus, and finally the wet salt of the ocean when I got home. Our house is full of different kinds of squash, and we're enjoying our veggies that we get weekly from the campus farm. We've made zucchini-crusted pizza, salsa with organic hot peppers, tomatoes, onions, and cilantro, delicata squash pasta with parmisan, and lots and lots of greens. We have too many onions to know what to do with them all, and hot peppers coming out our ears. Fall is so generous with its delicious veggies in coastal California. Recipe suggestions are welcome!

I really expected an anti-climax after getting back from my year abroad in Italy, but it's been quite the contrary. My daily life has accelerated into a blur of lectures and microwaved leftovers and dips into the pool, with occasional bouts of sleeping. I'm no longer a stranger in (such) a strange land, nor am I a rookie in college. I thinking learning how to use my elbows in Italy (that is, becoming pushy-er) and repeating the routine of classes at Santa Cruz for the third time have given birth to a new, often more self-assured me.

I'm evaluating all a manner of possible options for next year, including starting a masters somewhere in California in some interesting subject, taking an extension class from Santa Cruz while I find some direction, working on an organic farm temporarily (also known as WWOOF-ing), or trying to find some sort of job in the City for a year before I continue to grad school.

Despite the fact that I have two midterms Thursday, I am not yet waxing poetic this evening...I have so many ideas that strike me during all the lectures I sit through in class, and yet by the time I get home with eyelids drooping and fatigue in my brain, I am empty of all those thoughts. Somehow, I must perservere through the week, especially this one...I am on a mission to think of the best Halloween costume ever. Ideas are welcome. Alla prossima...

Santa Cruzing

Here I am in Santa Cruz again. I meant to write more immediately after my arrival in California but now is as good a time as ever. In fact, it's an ideal time, especially because I should be studying. So of course the impulse to write is back.

I think now that I'm here I have time to absorb all the things I thought about and learned and came across while abroad. And I'm realizing things that I didn't even know I learned, or that I always thought about but didn't think I was working on them, consciously or subconsciously. Maybe it's just seniorhood: all things fall into place when you are on top of the heap. But not necessarily. Not that anything is clear of course. Who knows whether this time next year I'll be in Ireland wiping down tables or at the Monterey Institute of Language or in Santa Cruz trudging on through the master's program or starting over with urban studies in some other university or going out into the real world "to get pissed off" to eventually come back to school.

I'm back to yoga, back to the redwoods, back to the OCEAN (not the sea!), and back to belonging where I am. Yes, I certainly enjoy the fake world right now. Here I have an ocean view and a social life and a purpose and a routine.

For now Italy is in my daily consciousness as fascist history and as Primo Levi and as my memories of the nooks and crannies of Bologna.

It's funny...here majoring in Italian Studies one could construct a whole identity based on being interested in a foreign culture. In Italy it's a bit strange to walk around on the street and major in that reality. How do you explain to people you're interested in what they live and eat and breathe? Just like the fish in water metaphor: could you tell a fish you major in water studies? Would it be able to conceptualize water? Certainly Italians can conceptualize Italian studies, but I wonder if they get the feeling they're being examined.

Until next time (I have a pressing assignment),
Robyn

So the unthinkable happened.

I bought a teal top. Not that I'm going to let this blog degenerate into a space for me to carry on shallow discussions between my id and ego about my clothes. But to those of you who might understand the gravity of this moment, I would like to say cheers to my year abroad for turning me from a teal-hater to someone who can begin to appreciate the whole color spectrum in its complexity and even sport it.

It's been a while since I've blogged. Months, more precisely. And the reason? I stopped studying! I would always blog right in the middle of studying for a big test...those were inspired moments, moments when I need to be working, not blogging of course. I'm always blogging in my mind though, or at least writing. When I think about how I would write about a place or an experience, maybe the thoughts come out more clearly, they get organized into straight-ish lines and they behave in an orderly manner. My experiences become richer too, when I think about them in writing.

This morning was the first time I realized I might actually be sad to leave at the end of the year. Nancy, my dearest Nancy, is leaving for Portugal as we speak and from there will go home to California in September. I also said goodbye to some other girls from the program on Friday night at aperitivo (going out for drinks and munchies before the regular dinner hour).

My experience hasn't been monumental or earth-shattering this year. It felt in some ways like a regular year at college...I know some people on my program managed to see every capital in Western and Eastern Europe and Northern Africa, saw the sights and posted new pictures of themselves with ever changing backdrops every weekend on Facebook. I didn't have that whirlwind experience, and in some ways I'm disappointed that I didn't travel to all the places I was counting on visiting. In other ways though I'm perfectly content. It must be said that I traveled enough for my own tastes and spent quality time where I did go. But also I really feel like I know Bologna. I feel as at home probably as any student who moved to Bologna to go to school. I also have had nice dinner parties and I've learned to make a million new dishes this year. I've spent time with Giovanni's family, even during some rough moments. Maybe the fact that I've been having this sort of everyday experience made me think I wouldn't be so torn to leave this place.

But saying goodbye to Nancy this morning over tiramisù and watermelon was enough make me realize that it's is really the beginning of the end. Just as I miss some pretty simple things from last year like my little Parisian making weird food with too much tabasco sauce and making fun of her or turning off the light and giggling with Jessica and Beatrice (said Parisian) for another hour, or catching up after a long day with Francesco, I think I'll miss simple things from this year too: cheese from my cheeseman ("E poi?"), running with Nancy in our cute little ugly park, eating good food and laughing it up at Giovanni's apartment with Jo and Giulia, piadinas at La Tua Piadina, living a stoplight, two homeless guys, and a couple bars away from Giovanni, and a score of other little things. I guess the truth is that simple doesn't mean meaningless...quite the contrary actually.

I'll miss Nancy being just a piazza away. I'll miss the sort of lifestyle that allows students to have a social life but still renders them independent and studious. I'll miss being able to call Giovanni on the phone because again, we're going to have to spend another year long-distance.

I have been traveling a bit lately...that's another reason why I haven't written. I took a couple of trips in Tuscany in May and got to see Amanda Cook there and meet her grandma! I also took some day trips to the beach and to Urbino, where Raffaello was born. I went to Prague with Nancy at the beginning of June! Came back for less the 24 hours, went to the end of the year party for our exchange program (looking forward to getting to know the new Italian banana slugs in the fall!), and then took off for a two week trip in Sweden and France.

In the Czech Republic Nancy and I also got to see Karlovy Vary (aka Carlsbad, sister city of Carlsbad, California) where we got massages and a sauna at a world renounced facility. We went to Plzen where lots of beer comes from, and Karlstein Castle. I ate amazing potatoes and fried cheese (that's still digesting down there with my deep fried candy bar from the fair four years ago) and drank actually tasty beer (never liked the stuff before, despite my persistence in trying it) Amanda showed up there too...you would think all of Europe is more compact than the space between Santa Cruz and Berkeley.

In Sweden I got to see two former banana slugs: Hanieh and Pelle! Giovanni and I stayed with Pelle in Lund so we got to see the university there, Malmö where Hanieh is from, and Copenhagen which is just a somersault and a big bridge away. The Turning Torso building by Santiago Calatrava was super cool...kind of reminds you of the Sundial Bridge in Redding, California by the same fellow.

We also went on a canoe trip with Pelle and his girlfriend Ylva --- I had always wanted to do an overnight boat trip! And now I want more! It was beautiful and relaxing. Then we stayed in a boat (as in the boat was our hostel) in Stockholm. Think bunkbeds, space economy, gentle rocking, and shared bathroom. Good times though. The Nobel museum was stellar, and there was an architecture museum that we spent a good two hours in (and there was only one room). "Why didn't I study architecture?" I like to ask myself on occasion. Sweden is the land of delicious whole wheat bread and yummy pancakes for dinner and people who speak English better than me (better than I? just kidding...)

From Stockholm we flew to Marseille (which we didn't see much of) and then made it to Grenoble, where Amanda who I hadn't yet gotten enough of, studied this year. She introduced us to amazing pastries and lovely hiking paths and a delicious quiche. We took a day hike and also took a day trip to Lyon. I had already been there but it was nice to retrace the steps I took five years ago now, and also see things that I hadn't before.

Perhaps if you've gotten this far, my blog explosion is wearing on your patience. But I'll wear a bit more to finish this off with food news. For Nancy's festa yesterday, we had a veritable feast of delicious things. Eleonora had made farro (or spelt) with tomatoes, arugula, and cheese, as well as a delicious tiramisù. Nancy made fruit kebabs and brought watermelon....mmmmm. I kind of got carried away and wanted to try to make two dips. Tzatziki is the Greek one with yogurt, cucumber, and garlic which was too garlicky but good. Amanda had given me this awesome recipe for zaalouk, a Maroccan cooked veggie salad of eggplants and tomatoes with paprika, cumen, and parsley. That was delish and even the Italians liked it! Then we had a tomato and cucumber salad with zesty lemon dressing and I attempted a quiche like the one we had made at Amanda's in Grenoble but with spinach, ricotta, and feta. Last of all, because the peaches are so amazing right now I made a tiny peach crisp but ate most of it myself.

I'm off for now, but pretty soon I start summer camp in Reggio Emilia. Happy summer to all and to all a good 4th! I'm going to Paris then...more soon.

The Unplanned City Metaphor

Being monolingual for most of my life and then speaking another language is like walking into an unplanned city. Before leaving the "old city", the feeling that I generally understood the world was everpresent and lead me to think I understood things I never fully did, like the concept of mortgage or the word paradigm and lots of others. Maybe I understood most the words out there, but I never understood some compound concepts, but even that misunderstanding or lack of understanding never took me off balance. Whether I knew these random things or not, life meandered along tranquilly, with normal bumps and stress and more freckles or less freckles.

Just like I thought I knew Yreka inside and out. I could get anywhere in town, I know where I like to go and don't like to go, but I haven't been inside every building in town. I don't know how the water system works or many other things, but I trust that it does. And it does. The City works and I live my life, and we are mutually ignorant of each other, the City and I. I see shops and restaurants come and go, but I don't know anything about bigger mechanisms behind the movement of the city, the way it changes and the direction it's going. All the other cities in my life are relatively similar to my hometown, and they change but mostly for me their role stays the same. They are the sidewalk under my feet, and neither of us really considers the other in much detail.

Just as I never question my own language, and my own ignorance never reveals itself to me. I use the words I need most often, and I assume complete comprehension.

And all of the sudden, I'm in a city that's not planned. It's not planned so it's unlike everything I thought I understood, but still works of course, and perhaps is planned but in such a different way that I have to start from scratch to begin to understand how it works. I'm in a city that isn't following rules I remember now in retrospect unconsciously following. And as I begin to learn the rules, my age and my maturity help me question bigger processes...once I understand one simple mechanism, I see that there is something behind that that's bigger, and perhaps behind that again, until I get to a point of sometimes being able to understand more about my new city than I did about the old one.

So then I start to remember my own roots, and question the rules that I followed without being aware of them, wondering how my city began and what networks run through it, what evolutions it has sustained, what revolutions it has seen. I begin to understand things I never did in my old city, and in my native language, just because I question things here and learn concepts I never learned in my language, so to feel complete I need to translate them back into my own deepest network of understanding, which is English.

But it is still an unplanned city to me, and I'm often lost, and it doesn't have the kind of map I'm used to using. So I get used to being lost and always finding new shops or new restaurants, and I begin to accept my role as a perpetual foreigner in the unplanned city. But sometimes I have more lucid moments than the natives of course, just like outsiders to my City probably have. They'll of course never know my City like I do, but I'll never know my City like they do either.

I don't know if this metaphor is well sewn together. I kind of see it like a patch on a pair of pants that's half falling off. But I'm studying the history of Urban Studies in Europe and I had a revelation that united my two favorite disciplines at the moment. I actually envisioned speaking English as being in a small compartmentalized room and beginning to speak Italian as walking into a giant empty bubble where you could lose touch with the ground and of which the boundaries were sort of unclear. (What actually happened was that my housemate Mario was explaining something to Nicoletta and Vittoria and I understood before they did. And I got to thinking how weird it is that sometimes a non-native speaker could pick up on something before a native one could.) And those things to me translated into planned and unplanned cities because guess what........my oral exam for storia dell'urbanistica moderna e contemporanea is tomorrow!!!!! So of course it's time for a long, involved blog entry.

So in the real, concrete world, I went to Spain to vist Granada and Madrid in the middle of March. It was fun, pictures will be posted soon!

Vu cumprà?

To update those of you (all of you) who didn't have any good US cuisine ideas for my dinner last week, it was a success nonetheless. The menu included sweet potato coconut curry soup, cornbread, and a salad of radicchio, valerian, and fennel. Three of my ten guests brought dessert and we had some wine-bringers as well. The soup had acquired an eerie color, since I could only find these whitish potatoes with purple skin that claimed to be sweet potatoes and then I added the curry, which is a shade of yellowy-orange. The cornbread looked beautiful though. Funnily enough, everyone loved the soup and the cornbread was salty!! So it was sort of a dinner of surprises...I'm planning to re-do the cornbread well next time. My guests were mostly Italian, but there was another Californian representin' and a friend of mine from Lithuania, so it was a rather international evening. I'm planning another such dinner for my housemates: suggestions are still welcome.

Today is March 9th. Yesterday was International (minus the US) Women's Day. What a good day. I had another dinner last night to celebrate and because my friend Misa was visiting on the Italy leg of her month-long Eurotrip, she wanted to make some Italian dishes. We made pumpkin and zucchini risotto, salad with mozzarella di bufala (see Inno ai formaggi for details), and tiramisù for dessert. I am really mostly studying abroad to eat and let me just say I deserve Summa Cum Laude and then some...there were really fun guests and good conversation too. If I do anything next year that I learned how to do this year, it will be make lots of food and invite good company over to eat it.

Actually it was awesome to have Misa here. She liked Bologna so much she didn't want to visit Venice or Florence. For some reason, my housemates haven't made much of an effort to speak to my native English-speaking guests, but I don't really expect them to. This time, I got to hear all of their English as they made a huge effort with Misa.

On another topic, I was thinking as I came back from class today how exactly certain ethnic groups decide or, in any case, end up working in certain sectors. Here, it's an obvious phenomenon that you can see by just walking out my front door. Small produce markets that are open even on Sunday and late into the evening are run by people generally from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. In fact, it's really common to say something like "I'm going to the Pakistanis' to buy some ____" as a reference to this genre of store. The produce is often less expensive than the grocery store but if only men work there, like at the place below my house, I think twice before going in. Despite the fact that I am a potential customer, every once in a while (and most annoyingly right below my apartment), the owners make kissy lips or call out suggestively.

Others go door to door ringing all the bells of every apartment to be let in to stick junk mail in everyone's mailboxes.

Along the porticoes on my street, many immigrants from Africa (and I would bet from a particular African country, though I'm not sure which) sell imitation designer purses and belts. They sit and wait as people pass by, and call out to encourage a purchase if someone stares particularly fixedly on some piece of merchandise. These vendors always look thoroughly bored (and rightfully so) or else worried as they hide behind the big pillars that hold up the porticoes because they are selling illegal ripoffs of designer stuff.

Another group of vendors, usually from Nigeria (I have asked a couple of times), walks around to solicit people to buy kleenex in those little travel size packs, gloves, socks, and things that are easily portable. They are not passive like the imitation bag sellers, in fact they are often rather aggressive, always holding out their hand to shake yours and then holding your hand as you pull away. This must be the worst of the jobs, because they have to get in people's faces all day long and probably seventy percent of the time they are blown off rudely. Some of them really look dejected and depressed, and most, if they don't succeed in convincing someone to buy their merchandise they ask for a euro, just to buy a cup of coffee. It's a good strategy, I often give a euro because I can't imagine living that lifestyle day in and day out. Sometimes they look relieved when I just shake their hand and tell them honestly I don't have any money, or they ask my name and tell me to have a good day. Some sell really cool things like thin books filled with poetry from various African nations. Many speak English and have a really hard time in Italian: some, even when I speak back in Italian, plead anyway in English.

I wonder why some get the job of roving vendor, and some get to sit boredly and let the customer come to them, and why others are able to own shops and decide their own hours and establish a more even relationship with their regular customers, like the Pakistanis and everyone else who falls under that category. It seems like there's an ethnic hierarchy of immigrants to Italy and as soon as one arrives, they will have a narrow field of options to choose from. It's not a new phenomenon; I remember talking to my mom about the Chinese Laundries in California in the peak years of the Gold Rush, and today in the US hotel and gas station owners are stereotypically Indian. It's curious though.

Homegrown Cuisine Survey

Super quick post to do a super quick survey of foreign and native Californian/US food-appreciators alike: I'm making a big dinner on Wednesday night at 20:30, which would be 11:30 in the morning for those of you in the Pacific Standard Time Zone. So answer before then!

What is good California food? What is good US food? I was thinking chili and cornbread, but I don't like chili, rice-stuffed avocados (found a good-looking recipe), guacamole with weird chips (weird because we're in Italy), split-pea soup, something with strawberries (thinking about Watsonville), something with artichokes (thinking about Castroville)....any of those sound like winners? I don't think I have time to make dessert as well, but if you have an easy suggestion, shoot.

So far I have four confirmed guests, but we could get up to nine or ten and I want to let our peculiar blend of fusion cuisine shine for these folks. Recipes are welcome if they've had success.

In other current events, I am done with my tests. I learned a lot of things and I'm still recovering. So far I'm really liking my new classes, especially history of urbanization. I think when I'm bored with being a brilliant linguistics researcher, I'm going to go into environmentally-friendly city planning. I'm also taking Spanish linguistics...get this, within a month, I'll be giving an oral exam in Spanish! Sometimes I'm my own worst enemy. And I'm taking applied linguistics; the prof likes bashing Noam Chomsky but I'm faithful to the number one linguistic revolutionary of the century. And in the meanwhile, I'm learning how to do a new kind of linguistics research using computer programs.

Tomorrow I start a mini-teaching project at a local high school: the topic? Renewable energy resources. Yay for the spread of knowledge!

And my other latest news is a collaboration with a certain professoressa Bragaglia, who is preparing a speech about food and cinema for Princeton in English with which I am helping her. In exchange, she, a member of Slow Food (http://www.slowfood.com/), is giving me cooking lessons.

Until next time...

Last week I jumped out of a plane. Well, hypothetically. Well, mentally. I sat down at the desk, breathed deeply, double-checked my pen grip, tried to settle the nausea rising from my stomach, and opened my eyes to look at the four prompts to choose from for this essay I was supposedly going to write. That's when I fell out of the plane. And wasn't sure if the parachute was strapped on, or if any of the training I had been doing was going to be of use for the five-hour fall towards earth I was going to take, guided by the tip of my pen.

That's what it felt like. I've never felt like I didn't have control before, or like I really wasn't prepared. Or like I would have to bullshit for five hours in Italian for lit professors to read about an author of whose work I had read barely anything. I still can't figure out if I survived the fall or not. But very few more of those jumps are planned in the near future. Just two oral exams and a paper.

I'm going to post new pictures soon. To really capture the essence of my life lately, I should put on my pajamas and turn on my desk light, set up some crumb-covered plates and an empty mug with a dry tea stain at the bottom, hunch over my desk with ten books stacked up in front of me, flip wildly through my dictionary and have someone come take pictures. That's really been the essence of my life in the last month or so. A presto, cari amici.

Traveling Writers or Writing Travelers

I'm back in the land of solemn strangers, great cheese, and tiny cars. I visited home for the break...the land of public drinking fountains, carpet on the floor so you can go barefoot, wide spaces, and quiet. I slept a lot and watched movies and went to an engagement party for someone who graduated high school with me (!) and saw all my high school teachers and my Yreka friends. I also played in the alumnae soccer game (and couldn't walk for two days afterward) and went cross-country skiing and spent quality, quality time with my mom and my bro. It was worth the long trip and the 24 hours in the cursed Belgian airport. Now I'm in turbo study mode (which of course means time for another blog entry). I have five exams between January 23 and February 22. Yikes.

I am taking a class about Italian travel literature around the turn of the century. It's not trashy travel lit, but novels and essays and ideas elaborated by well-respected writers of the 20th century: Guido Gozzano, Giovanni Pascoli, d'Annunzio, Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Manganelli and so on.

We have talked about the weird impressions that writers make of foreign places, more for their own benefit and self-discovery than with the "natives" in mind. Much of it is bonafide colonial propaganda but some authors have more complex perspectives, hard to define as racist, especially within their historical and social contexts, but hard to completely forgive either, because they've contributed to our perceptions of India, of Africa, of Asia in ways that have damaged those places, made them exotic, or created such a dense literary web around them that it's impossible to see through to something real. I wonder if it's possible at all though, to do justice to a place when writing about it without idealizing it or to notice things without judging or to write in a way that transcends one's own historical or social context. Maybe travel writing never does because it necessarily draws on differences, on personal (biased) perceptions, on intercultural relationships.

And those perceived differences are what draw me to write about Italy. It's the discomfort that I experience here, or the questions I ask that just don't occur to me at home (which by the way would be even harder to describe than Italy, since I'm inside it. Granted I'm not transmitting a clear picture of Italy or Italian culture in my writing, but writing from within a culture about it would seem impossible.) I've certainly done my share of criticizing since I've been writing about my experience so far in Italy. What I've learned from this class is that the travel writing unfailingly reveals more about the writer than the spotlighted country: his or her expectations, cultural ignorance, cultural upbringing.

Just as I know it will never be possible to speak Italian with native grace and speed, I suspect it will be impossible to render an unbiased picture of a country that isn't mine. Nor as I said above, really render an unbiased picture of the United States, a country that is, sort of, mine. I don't really have a satisfactory ending for this entry. It's just something I continue to think about. Until next time...

Salty in the AM!

Did you know that Italians had timers in their mouths? Me either. But it's my latest discovery. There are blocks of time in the day reserved for savory, sour, salty and blocks of time reserved for sweet. Any correctly raised Italian has this feature, but they must have grown up in Italy to acquire it. And be careful too.

They are quick to notice when this divine order is interrupted. Sure, it varies slightly from the south to the north, considering that meal times in the north span from about 8 am to 9 pm, and those in the south roughly from 10 am to 11 pm. Consider that I prepared myself a frittata around 9 am one morning, which is roughly an omelet with fewer ingredients (onions and zucchini and eggs, plus parmesan). As people meandered into the kitchen for their morning coffee with cookies and a cigarette, I went on about my business. As sleepy as they were (there are five others who live in this house with me, let's say two of them were up), their acute noses and mouth timers told them something was awry. They sidled up to me curiously and tried to hide their grimaces as they verifired what their sensory organs were telling them was true: SALTY for breakfast!! Salty in the AM alert! Salty in the AM alert! Salty comes only after 1 pm! (Which allows Italians to eat cookies for breakfast, an act of pure barbary if you ask me!)

I made a pumpkin pie this weekend at Giovanni's house, and his family said they like it. His cousin suggested that it would work better as an antipasto than as a desert because of the sweet/savory contrast because the crust had no sugar and she perceived it immediately.

It's 10:35 in the morning and I'm about to go heat up some lasagne for lunch because I have a 3 hour class ahead of me. Hopefully no one comes into the kitchen...

Discorso italiano

Well as they say, I'm sotto esame...the test is tomorrow so what better time than to clean my bathroom, put away my clothes, check my email, and update THE BLOG than this?

It's November already. I guess someday I'll stop being flabbergasted at the way time keeps passing, but not yet. Still fully flabbergasted.

My exam is in art history, Giotto, gothic architecture, the beginning of the Renaissance, etc. One nice feature of the class is that we're taking field trips as much as we spend time in the classroom, so we're also getting a tour of Bologna's art history and comparing it with the trends of greater Italy and the rest of Europe. Not a bad way to study art history, if it really must be studied.

I think I've slid into a phase of really enjoying being here. On the one hand, it feels pretty normal, just as if I've finally adjusted to a routine change of place (not crossing political/linguistic/geographical borders). On the other, I realize that there are genuine differences between my life here and that in Santa Cruz...I'm still of course Robyn, which means I take studying really seriously and freak out regularly about not understanding everything and not being perfect, but I find it easier to be social here. Perhaps I finally became the mysterious and interesting exchange student whose company I always pursue at home, but I think social norms are very different between university students at home and those here. Eating is a sacred ritual for example, that, if occasionally observed with Italians, can really compose a completely fulfilling social life. For me, it's enough in fact. I've yet to hit all of the bars in Bologna or see the inside of any disco club, but I'm content spending long hours on many courses and rich, undulating, comfortable conversation that mirrors the food in its quality.

I have spent all of my entries thus far criticizing various aspects of my experience and what I perceive as Italian culture, but I do deeply respect what I like to call the Italian gift for rhetoric and discourse. There is no subject too mundane to transform into a vivid conversation peppered with opinions and conjectures and decisive conclusions. And given my linguistic background with the esteemed Jim McCloskey, I can sit back and enjoy what he recognizes as verbal stroking...this professor of mine at Santa Cruz has voiced the opinion that language is used largely for the purpose of joking, social interaction, social connection, rather than comunication in the information-transmitting sense of the word. I like this idea. And if social interaction contributes to health, I think that rather than Mediterranean cuisine, language and conversation contribute in extraordinary ways to the general health of the Italian population. After all, studies show that Italians are among the healthiest in Europe, and let me just say that it's certainly not the smoking that's keeping them beautiful.

I've been making a concerted effort to spend more time with Italians after a particularly English-intensive bout that I spent a few weeks ago...after all, I already know that language. I'm not really here to speak it, and THE BLOG keeps me from getting rusty, naturally.

I went to a graduation party last week for a housemate. The graduations consist of presenting a 50 to 80 page thesis to a panel of professors in your department who you probably don't know, after which you are told your grade for your thesis. Then everyone else who presented to the panel on that particular day crowds into the examination room with friends and family and the overall grade for their degree is announced in front of everyone, and they are pronounced a graduate in X field. We came back to the house for cocktails (we recently had a new housemate move in who's an aspiring professional bartender and is training with Giovanni's housemate at the Drink Factory, a bartending school :)) and later meandered, all 35 of us, to an upscale restaurant for antipasti, two main courses, a dessert, and neverending wine. It's questionable whether I'll come back having passed any classes here. But I'll definitely have a new cookbook full of recipes on my mental bookshelf.

Until next time...

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!

The City

I have been thinking lately what a difference there is between life in the city and life outside of it. Ironically, I just had the most positive, non-city-like experience this morning, to counter all the expected negatives that are here like smog and overstimulation and no trees.

I saw the doctor this morning, but I didn't have to go to the doctor's office. It was a real live house call! I woke up yesterday morning with a stiff neck and any wrong move triggered a painful seizing up of all the muscles. (I never believed in the so-called colpo d'aria, a supposedly dangerous phenomenon that happens when you let in a draft, involving stiff muscles, cold, flu, sore throat. It means a "blast of air" more or less, but they act like they were hit by a train when they experience un colpo d'aria. As if a nice cool breeze could have malicious intentions....)

Instant karma for all the heckling I've done to Giovanni for coming from a wimpy culture. I walked around town like Frankenstein yesterday hoping that after a night of rest I'd be ready to run this morning. E invece no! This morning the muscles seized every few minutes and I decided I had to call the doctor because I couldn't figure out how else to deal with this probably minor problem that was unbearable. Dr. Williams is an American doctor, and helps lots of foreign students. What a relief it was to know the the doctor was on his way and I could eat breakfast and stay comfortable while I waited.

After all of this psychologically painful adjusting to "city life", I must say I never expected to experience a real house call by a doctor ever in my life. In fact, it makes me want to stop eating my apple a day so as not to keep the doctor away.

Despite this anomalous experience, I have been adjusting to city life in all of its smoggy, frenetic manifestations, sometimes with difficulty. I realize that every time I go out, I sort of need a wall of defense: sunglasses, a stony stare straight ahead, a keen eye for vomit, feces, urine, or spilled alcohol, and agility to dodge vespas, tiny but speedy cars, and to navigate through elderly women loaded down with groceries, impeccably dressed business types, women in high heels, and cigarettes hanging from every third hand. I am used to space and the smiling courtesy of strangers and feeling clean after a walk downtown. Bologna, in fact, is rather clean. There is not much trash for a place that seems to have been built for people to interact socially in a million ways all day long, and presumably create trash. They say it is cleaned every day (like most cities, I suppose) in the wee hours of the morning.

In fact, it is rather enchanting in terms of social life, and is becoming moreso as the initial feeling of overstimulation from seeing too many faces and hearing too much noise fades. In fact, Bologna has 38 kilometers (about 24 miles) of porticos. These are structures supported by columns that cover the sidewalk and offer shade from the sun, shelter from the rain, and generous sidewalk space for idle chatting, asking for directions, or eating. The map of Bologna looks like a funky bicycle wheel, with one large spoke cutting it in half (via dell'Indipendenza) and many other streets spreading like rays from somewhere in the middle to the outer boundary of the city. The tire, in this analogy, is the series of road that circles the city and actually used to be a wall for protection from the so-called barbarians.

As I venture down the stairs from my fifth story apartment, I go out with the intention of getting lost so that I can find myself by getting oriented again. Every street seems to end up in the center of the city, so with little skill I usually get found as quickly as I get lost.

As part of the intensive language course that I'm taking, I went on an excursion to see the remains of an Etruscan city, complete with an acropolis to worship the gods, a necropolis to bury the dead, and a sewer system. From there, we traveled to a small town between Bologna and Florence called Monte Sole, the site of one of many village massacres by the Nazi and Fascist forces during World War II in an attempt to eliminate partisans without having to figure out who was a partisan. Our guide, Francesco Pirini, who walked us up a paved road through oak trees and blackberry bushes, was a survivor of the massacre, and lost everyone in his family but his sister. We saw the remains of his bombed out church and the cemetery where the occupiers lined all the townspeople up to be killed. His message wasn't surprising but it was clear: Non fare la guerra. Don't make war.

Peace.