Second Thursday in Rome-- 7/1

Compared with Monday, Wednesday and Friday with art history tour, this Thursday is more physically relaxing with both Prof. Kasaba’s and Prof. Friedman’s classes in classroom. The refreshing morning would be better boomed after a cup of cappuccino at the Magnolia where there are always kind waiters and waitress saying “Ciao, bella~” to you.

Starting from 9:30am, we began our discussion on the “Trickster Travel” in Prof. Kasaba’s class. At least for me, the book was not easy to read and to comprehend at first. Too many Arabic names for people and places made it hard to keep a clear track on author’s references within the story. However, the discussion today definitely helped a lot on combing the piles of information with a introduction on Islamic historical background by Prof. Kasaba.

Then, we also talked about main character – Al-Hasan Al-Wazzan–and his changing identities during his journey and his capture in Rome, especially through his writing, which implies his linguistic identities. I particularly interested in how languages affect people as recognizing themselves under different cultural circumstance.

So the morning class passed quickly and all of us streamed out of the air-conditioned conference room to hunt for some food under the scorching sunshine. Pizza? Sandwich? Insalata? Pasta? Or cook at the apartment? I bet all of us struggle on coming an answer everyday~

Then after the 2-hour break, we came back and joined Kathy into the reflections on several experiences we had on migration, including the movie we saw on Tuesday, visit to Piazza Vittorio, the novel and an article on Nigerian trafficking in Europe. Our topics were quite widespread and the discussion was really active. We shared our impressions on the Esqullino market, especially how immigrants vendors and customers performed and interacted within that particular space. I also shared my experience on interviewing two Chinese immigrants. In addition, there was a topic interested me a lot about how people perceive their identity when they speaking different languages, which I never thought about before.

And yes, BTW, we got the electricity cut off during Kathy’s class, which made the room extremely hot and intolerable ><

At night, there was optional movie showing on the conference room, “The Leopard”, which was adapted from a famous novel Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa that chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the Risorgimento. The epical movie was taken on 1963 and you could its age from its style and images, with splendid ballroom scenes and beautiful natural landscape in southern Italy. However, the movie was “a little bit” too long, right? Lasting for nearly 3 and a half hours!?

Ok~ that’s basically our physically relaxing but mentally intensive Thursday and I just noticed that: are we almost half done in Rome?? That’s incredible!!