Moonbows, Racism, and Alternative Families

Last night when we were walking towards the bus stop, there was a hazy, muted rainbow all the way around the moon with all of the colors, red through violet. It was like those rare circular daytime rainbows except whited and ethereal. We risked life and limb by walking up the hill by the school offices (frequently populated by whizzing motorcycles and buses that barely fit in the narrow street) with our heads craned up, and, about halfway up the hill, the clouds receded, dragging the moonbow off with them until it was gone.

There's a little bit of beauty to balance out the rest of this post. My host family, I have been continually realizing, is, like much of Siena, firmly rooted in the past. I mean, our host mother has talked to us about premarital sex and abortion and all manner of rather modern topics, but, in some ways, she and Giulio may as well be living in the first half of the last century. For example, there has been a recent and rather large immigration of Albanians into the area, and the natives are dead set against them. Giuliana has told us the Albanians are always getting pregnant and leaving their babies with the state and that Siena is safe except for the Albanians. Apparently large groups of them gather in the Campo at night and we are to avoid them or travel in pairs when they are around. I have, by the way, seen no such large groups, and our program directors assure us that anywhere in the city walls (especially in the Campo), we are perfectly safe. Apparently, it has also become something of a habit to say of anything shabby or poorly made that it is Albanian or made by Albanians. This makes Flannery and I pretty uncomfortable, but there is a certain line we don't feel like we can cross with them.

Along the same lines, I am convinced that there are no gay people in Siena or, at least, no openly gay people. All of the women are as feminine as feminine can be and the men as manly as manly can be, and they all exude heterosexuality. The only places I have seen homosexuality even mentioned are American MTV (dubbed into Italian) and a rather cultured (not exactly a blockbuster) movie. I feel like I am back in Kansas times ten, and I don't like it one bit.

Anyway, that is it for now. Tomorrow, I shall write about Lucca and my thesis.