Riding scooters through The countryside on our way to the tiny town of Penne. Hours and hours in the hot baking sun.

This is it. The entrance to the great city of Penne. Hometown to my great-grandfather’s family. The morelli family. Town of 13,000 people. an ancient town dating from 213 AD. The whole town made of brick. All the roads are paved in brick. Everything is built on these hills. And everything is connected. All just one gigantic building housing thousands of people and churches and businesses. All made of this old brick. Climbing up the hills on our scooter, climbing up and up The cold ride back. looking for Carla. The beautiful people. what a feeling it was to sit in a 1500 year old café in the hometown of my great grandfather.... long before I was ever even conceived of or imagined...

Stopped at these family’s home because they make olive oil right there in their house. Sat down and got to know them a little. Eating bread and cheese and oil. I bought jugs and jugs of this olive oil to bring back with me.

Such a contrast to the big city of Pescara. Pescara is like Detroit or something. It is just a sprawling city. highways everywhere. a lot of industry. The ugliest place I have seen in Italy so far. it is actually hard for me to drive through due to the overwhelming lack of real beauty anywhere in the town. Which is funny because so far it is the nicest collection of beautiful girls I have seen in the country. We are truly in awe of what we have seen the last two days. So many beautiful girls and boys it is hard to fathom at first. The Italian girls try to talk with us but we do not speak well enough. And they speak no English except, ‘what is your name. my name is ...’ 

Stephano is saying whenever you are abroad you really get to learn so much about your own country that you don't learn if you just stay in your country. You hear some one say something very matter of factly and you are like, “wow, that's right. I never thought of that.” or “wow, so that's what people think huh? Wow.” Their attitude is so strange about America. He is now talking about Nelly and 50 cent and all the black videos and how wonderful they are. “All those beautiful black girls in the bikinis and their big butts and the guys with the jogging suits and all the gold and they're just standing there looking cool. We do not have black people in Germany. Oh its so cool in America.” 

What is a nationality? Very different in America than in Europe. here people tend to stay in the same place. they don't move as often. In the states it is very common to move around a lot. Maybe you move three four times in your life. maybe more. in Europe it is not so common. But I digress. In America when we are children we always play this game in class. Without a doubt if you are American you can remember when sometime in class the teacher would ask all the children where they are from, what their nationality was. Because of course we all come from somewhere else. I remember there were always at least one or two kids who would shrug their shoulders and say “I'm just American.” meaning that they just didn't know where they were from. Their parents never told them. perhaps their parents didn't know either. But you hear all kinds of things. Some kids would just be Iranian. Or Polish. Or Indian. Or Irish. Or German. But more often the student would say, I'm half polish, a quarter Cherokee, and a quarter Lebanese or some strange thing like this. it is very common in America. Not in other parts of the world yet. then there were the mutts. They would readily admit with a sheepish grin, “I'm a mutt.” And they would have like five or six different nationalities behind them through a lot of mixed marriages over the centuries. So in the end are they American? 

Some people say that if you are born in America then you are American. plain and simple. And yet if you are born in America but your family Chinese and your parents speak very little English and all of your friends are Chinese or Asian, then you're pretty fucking Chinese still. even though you may live in America. Its tricky. Go to New York. The lines are still pretty blurred there. 

South Florida too. you have a whole region of the country where there are very few actual Americans. And yet they are all living in American and doing their best to be American. many of them illegally. South Florida is really a melting pot of South America and the Caribbean. Very few actual white Anglo Saxon Americans. [can someone tell me what the fuck Anglo Saxon means. I keep forgetting to look it up.] Very few. All of them born somewhere else, or their parents. Many of them speaking little English or being first generation English speakers, so their English is functional at best. 

For me growing up in a very Italian family, where mostly Italian was spoken in the house of my grandparents and the culture and customs of the house were Italian, it was very strange, because my brother and I were desperately trying to be just American. and of course our grandparents were desperately trying to keep us Italian. and then my father’s family is English. But are they? We have traced them back four generations now and they are still in America, just traveling from state to state. No sign of England yet. so this would make me pretty fucking American on that side. My father as well. So maybe that's what an American is. someone who’s been here for some time. a few generations. The other nationalities get wiped out and forgotten over the years. 

My children will of course be American. but what if I marry a Vietnamese woman and move to France. And my children are born there? then what are they? I would assume they would be French with American and Vietnamese blood. Whatever the hell that really means. And their children? I have a friend named Rosie who lives in Germany. She is German. She speaks German. Her name is very German. But she looks Taiwanese. That's because her parents moved to Germany from Taiwan before she was born. They speak Taiwanese. And some German. So what is she? Who knows? she sure doesn’t look German. But she acts VERY German. But looks VERY Taiwanese. Strange. 

Cleo was born in Switzerland while her mother was studying there. But her mother is a hundred percent French. her father and his family are from England. So is she Swiss? Even though she is half English and half French? it gets even more confusing. Her father’s parents were actually Russian Jews who migrated to England. So is she Russian? Is she Jewish? Or is she just an English French Swiss girl? Or since she moved to America when she was 11 and now has her green card, is she just American? tricky. 

Infinito was born in Washington DC, raised in Bolivia, but his parents are Latin and Italian. So what the hell is he? He hates leaving Miami because “there are too many “gringos” out side of Miami” so I would say that makes him pretty fucking Bolivian.  

Some Jews say that being Jewish is not a nationality but simply a religion. There it gets really tricky. I always just end the debate by saying fine then it’s a sub-culture or even a race then. Very tricky there. Over the centuries they have had to move from country to country, always changing nationalities, but somehow always staying Jewish. Always marrying Jewish. Keeping the blood Jewish and the look and the customs Jewish. But what is Jewish? Obviously more than simply a religion. But again, the nationality always changing. 

Think about my Palestinian friends who were born in “Israel” but are Palestinian. They aren't Jewish. But they are Israelis. They speak Arabic and Hebrew and live in neighborhoods mixed with Jewish, Christian, and Palestinian. So their nationality would be Israeli, but they are Palestinian and Arab and Muslim. Crazy. 

I hate the fucking bread in Italy by the way. its always hard. 

Rome has aprox 4 million inhabitants living here. and over 5 million tourists swarm on the place each year. So this explains a lot. This has got to be a challenge to make this your hometown. I see arguments all the time between the locals who work here and tourists who cannot speak Italian. just trying to order bread or park a car. I could not imagine if 5 million people were always crowding around my hometown trying to talk to me in languages I didn't understand. And in this heat everyone is very uptight. This is Italy right now in their current evolution as a country. At least in the big cities. Roma, Napoli, Venezia, Firenze. I guess its like Orlando, Florida or Hollywood, California, or Washington DC. You get used to it after a while. but trying to drive here is truly maddening. I couldn’t live here myself. Just like I couldn’t live in Orlando either. It’s a weird feeling driving to school everyday trying to maneuver around all the thousands of tourists. You feel stared at all the time. and you truly do start to loath tourists. It makes you feel like are just a tourist attraction yourself. Or that your city is just a tourist attraction that is, something to visit for two days and then leave. It’s a weird feeling. It doesn’t have a valuable feeling here because the feeling in the air is so “o.k. lets go see this and then this and then this and then lets get some quick dinner and then catch the plane.” 

Perhaps if you live here long enough you just stay away from any places where there are tourists. Which sucks because if you live here you want to be able to enjoy some of the beauty of the city. Since I have been here I have just stayed away from all the tourist places. Because I just don't feel like dealing with it. But this kind of does suck cause you do want to see the Sistine chapel etc but I don't know if its worth dealing with all the millions of people. Going to the coliseum really sucked. You just couldn’t get into the reality of what you were seeing because you are surrounded by all these street vendors selling souvenirs and thousands of people all walking around talking and taking pictures of each other in their stupid hats and shorts. As some cool chick I met from long island said there, “its just like Disney world, but hotter.” And I don't want the coliseum to feel like Disney world to me. it should at least slightly resonate some of its historical significance. But most of the places do not. The Trevi Fountain??? Forget it. its like walking onto a movie set. Its pure cheese. At least now during the summer. maybe during winter when there are a lot less people visiting it will all seem much more real and substantial.