Palermo Male Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Palermo Male Conversation

Conversation

I came here because I have a boyfriend here. We met last year in LA and we spent almost three – three four months apart and just talking over internet or on cam or phone, or something. And then on June, I just come here. I was supposed to be here for a month and then I’m here. Now, I’m waiting to get my visa from my lawyer whenever he want and – yeah, he showed me around Houston from Gulf Freeway to Space Center. It was fine. Yes, I am an actor and right now, I’m working at the theater as assistant director with a show with my boyfriend. But I hope to do, if not the next show, the next two shows to be on them like act …

Palermo Female Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Palermo Female Conversation

Conversation

I was born in Palermo Sicily, but I always live in Florence, in Italy of course where I was raised and where I studied foreign languages at university. My specialization is English language and literature. But then I taught English at school – at the primary school and I’m also specialized for high school but I’ve never – I never taught in high school, public, state, public school. And then I came here because my husband is working here for GE Oil & Gas and I’ve been living in Houston for three years and a half now. I have a little baby, a little boy. His name is Andrea. He is two and a half and he’s lovely and I enjoy teaching Italian here at U of H. I love students. I love this kind of job which is something similar to my background if you want as a student and as a teacher. 

Of course, I’m simply a lecturer but that’s difficult anyway because the habit are different, the way you study is totally different, the way people respond also, graduate and whatever, the grades are different, evaluation system is different but I enjoyed that. It was a great experience this year and I’m glad to repeat that next fall so – because I’m going to teach again. [speaks Italian]

Palermo Male Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Palermo Male Conversation

Conversation

I was born in Palermo, which is the capitol town of Sicily. That's an island, as you may know, you know, South of the Italian peninsula. It's actually the largest island, the largest island of the Mediterranean Sea, and also the largest island of the Mediterranean Sea, and also the largest region of the twenty regions of – that make up Italy. So I'm-- I was born there, I was raised there. My parents were not actually born in Palermo but they were born in the same--well, we call it province, like a more than a county, less than a region. Anyway, the moved to Palermo for business, you know? And I was born and raised there. And I went to school there. I did all my schooling there and also attended the University of Palermo, which is one of the largest universities in Sicily and in Italy. 

And while I was studying at middle school I had the good fortune of meeting good language teachers. So I just got involved and got passionate about the study of languages, which were to become my main focus, my main field of interest, together with culture and the literatures in, you know, in those languages. And in particular, I learned English, French, German, together with my native tongue, Italian, and my own dialect actually.

Uh, okay. [speaking Italian]

Sicily Female Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Sicily Female and N Italy Female Conversation

Conversation

Female: We… We’re a community center. It was born as a federation before it became what it is now, so basically all the Italian American of Houston would gather here. Well, not all of them, of course. And then, I don’t know exactly when the switch up, can’t tell you exactly the year, but it’s just a place where we have an Italian school, and we have all sorts of different culture events, movies, seminars, lectures.

Female2: Cooking classes.

Female: Cooking classes. Yes, she knows more about that, because she’s the one who puts them up. But I take care of the administrative part, accounting and even though the… my bachelor doesn’t have anything to do with what I do but… And what else? We do, our main event, it’s basically what’s keeps us alive is the Italian… the Houston Italian Festival, that we organize every year at the University of Saint Thomas. That’s normally in October. It’s the second week of October, I don’t know exactly the dates this year, but it should be sometime… I wanna say that the twelfth maybe starts.

Female2: It’s from Thursday afternoon until Sunday night. 

Female: It’s the… It’s on like the weekend before Columbus Day. So that’s our main event, but we do a little bit of everything. And it’s open to everybody to Italian Americans, but to Italians, a hundred percent Italians, people who are here for work reasons or just yeah, mainly work reasons.

Female2: And Italophiles. People, you know, they just love…

Female: Yeah, interested in Italy.

Female2: Yeah, they’ve traveled to Italy and they just, you know, want to know more. So. Well, I was born in Northern Italy. I completed my bachelor in Trieste, which is close to the Slovenian border. And my bachelor’s in foreign languages. After that, I had a few jobs, you know, for corporate, big corporation in Italy. I started off as a translator for quality department for a white good manufacturer. Then I found another job. I was the assistant of the deputy chairman of Luxottica, which is, you know, big company, makes sunglasses and hairspray and all that. And eventually I found who was to be the husband, and he was stationed in Italy in… with the army, U.S. Army. So we got married, and we moved to Richmond, Virginia. And he was working on his masters. I started working on my masters there. Then he deployed. Then after deployment, we got stationed to El Paso, so I completed my masters in El Paso, and eventually he got out of the army, found a civilian job in Houston. That’s how I came to Houston. And there was a position here as school coordinator for the Italian Cultural and Community Center, and I thought it was a good fit, you know, given that, you know, I studied foreign languages as a bachelor. And you know, I think you know my experience first-hand could, you know, come handy for people who want to learn Italian. 

So I applied. I got the job, and that I said was that school was filled and putting together events, you know, that I thought were appealing to a younger crowd. So we start, you know, like some of new format of wine tastings, you know, some cooking classes. Some lectures, you know, that they have more or less, you know, like a niche interest, you know, like in February, for instance, we had manufacturing of Italian shoes. And there’s like this girl that owns this company here in Houston that she imports Italian shoes and bags and she came here and gave a presentation. It was very interesting. So yeah, you know, I try to keep it varied, you know, just to cater to different audiences. That’s my story.

Female: Well, my story’s pretty simple and kind of close somehow, but I was born and raised in Sicily. I actually spent the first six years of my life in Northern Italy just because my parents were teachers and they were working up there. And I got my bachelor degree at the University of Catania, which is a town in Sicily, and I started working as a teacher. It wasn’t a full-time job. I was… It’s not… The economy is not great in all Italy, and especially in Sicily, so I would work a couple of months and then be off couple more months, and then work again. Until I met my husband was in the navy. He’s American. He’s from here, from Houston. He was stationed there for two years in Sicily. They send him to Sicily as a vacation kind of after they deployed him to Iraq or Afghanistan. And we met, and then we decided to move here. We came here. It was two thousand eleven. That’s when we got married. And we started our family here, and I started… When I came here, as soon as I got my employment authorization, I started helping in the… his, my husband’s grandfather’s business. It’s a paper company. And I helped there. I learned something about office administration, so when I saw this position, it used to be a bookkeeping position. I decided to apply and it was my first interview here in America, and it went well, so I’ve been with this center for four years now? Five actually. Yeah, five years almost and so far, so good. It’s been nice. I’ve met a lot of interesting people, and I’m pretty happy with how things turn out. So we’re planning on staying here. Every once in a while, when I get mad at my husband, I tell him I want to go back to Italy. But I don’t really mean it, so we’re planning on staying here for now and then we’ll see. We’ll see what happens. Yeah, it’s a very open-minded city and there’s a lot of different cultures, and I never felt like I was a visitor or… I guess everybody from somewhere else, so yeah. I’ve never lived anywhere else in the States. I’ve visited California and Oklahoma, but… I know, it’s kind of random, but people are nice here.

Male: The community center, what would you say that y’all’s or the organization’s goals for the next five to ten years would be?

Female2: Well, there’s a strategic plan in place. You know, right now, for instance, the marketing outreach. They started working on it I would say probably last year with some, you know, more, you know, like separate here. And I think, you know, probably putting, you know, the Italian Cultural Community Center on the map, because you know, it’s interesting when you go out and about like, you know, for a trade show or fairs, many people never heard about the center. And they’re like, “Oh, really? Is there an Italian Cultural and Community Center in Houston? What y’all do?” And then when you start explaining, you know, they’re like, “Oh, that sounds so interesting. I gotta check you out.” And then sometimes we see them here in classes or events, so I think, you know, putting the center on the map in Houston would be the main goal.

Aritzo Female Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Aritzo Female Conversation

Conversation

I was born in Aritzo, a town in central Italy, in Tuscany. Seventy kilometers south of Florence. I grew up there in a little village ten kilometers from Aritzo. And I then came to… at University in Florence. I lived in Crete for, in Greece, for two years for my PhD studies. And now I am been living in Rome for three years, but the next year I will go in Crete again. For the next four years, I will live six months abroad each year in Crete, in Cyprus, and in Poland, and I’m very happy about that. About my accent, let’s say, mine is a correct Italian accent, since I am from Tuscany and the Italian language is born in Tuscany. You rec—You can recognize that I am from Aritzo and not from other parts of Tuscany, because I don’t sucks the c. For example, I say Coca Cola, when the rest of Tuscany say Coca Cola. But I notice that only people from Tuscany can recognize this difference, because for people that are from other parts of Italy, okay, people that are from other parts of Italy can recognize only that I am from Tuscany.

Catania Male Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Catania Male Conversation

Conversation

I am Italian. I was born in the city of Catania, which is in Sicily. I attend university in my hometown. This way I do not have to rent an apartment, and I reach it within ten minutes by bus. Catania has the same structure of the old Italian cities. There is a historic city center and a periphery. The downtown is old. There are lots of old buildings and always are car to grab. The streets are narrow. There are lots of restaurant and pubs. The city has a volcano called Etna, which is the biggest in Europe. Sometimes there are volcanic eruptions and during the night, I can see the splashes of lava. It is a very beautiful show. Anyway, the volcano, fortunately for us, it is not an explosive volcano. The weather is always sunny and I like it. The temperature don’t go under ten Celsius, which are fifty Fahrenheit. And also the volcano’s surface is plenty of snow during the winter. The city overlooks the sea and I love it. I see on the American movies the wide beaches, but the Italian one are much less wide. And also the waves are much less high. As you know, we speak Italian in Italy, but there are lots of different dialects, which some of them I don’t understand, even if I am Italian. In Sicily, there is the Sicilian dialect, but pretty much every fifty kilometers, there are… there is a different accent. And sometimes I don’t understand if it is just a different accent or a different dialect.

Sicily Male Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Sicily Male Conversation

Conversation

So I was born in Sicily. I’m thirty-five years old. I live in Sicily since I get… since I reach thirty-two years. Then three years ago, I transfer to Rome. So my accent is a mix of Sicilian accent, and now I’m acquiring the accent of Rome. To let you a little bit understand the difference… the differences between these two accents, I can try to say two phrases, one in Sicilian and one in the accent of Rome, the Roman accent. So in Sicilian language, it’s like [Italian]. The same phrase in Rome it’s look like [Italian]. Maybe my English, too, it’s get some accent from Sicilian and some accent from Rome.

 Switzerland Female Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

 Switzerland Female Conversation

Conversation

So I was born in Germany because I’m half Italian, half German, but I moved to Switzerland when I only was a few days old. And since then, I always lived here. And I grew up in the South, where people speak Italian, and I also went to school there. I learned English and French, and at home I spoke also German. A few years ago, I moved to the North, the German-speaking part, and now I’m also learning Swiss German. 

Italian-Texan Female Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Italian-Texan Female Conversation

Conversation

Well, personally I think it’s one of the pearls of Italy. This is not the good house in my hometown, right there. And if you want to see part of my hometown, you had to come in the dining room. I’ll show you a picture that I enlarged. And I have one that done by charcoal, but I show it to Judy Guston the other day, and I drop it. So it’s back to have a frame.

Because you had to take ‘em there, the measurement, they’re different. Like anything else. Come on Miss Mary. This where I arrive, and when I went to New York few years back with my friend, Nan Smith, she bought me that for souvenir. Ellis Island. I was one of the last that immigrate through Ellis Island. They close it at the end of July, and I came on the first. This is the church. They send it to me few years back. This is our parish church, and this is where I was baptized, right here in this little church. That year that had snow, so the same day Christmas. This is part of my hometown. This is the Gothic Line where the German fought last, you know. They were up here. By camp here someplace is my grandmother’s house. That’s one on the street, and I live at the city limits. So it’s an old, old place, but see this is the courthouse again. It’s a beautiful place. My husband say, “Any place you look, you see beauty.” It’s really is beautiful. See, that’s where I had the other. I told you dear, I say, “See, you make me drop my picture.” 

Female2: Bet she got mad.

No. No, she didn’t. She wasn’t even here anymore. See what happened, I hung it back and I think... So anyhow, that’s it. I have a beautiful clock here that my friend send me. I want you to know she gave it to me five years ago. 

Female2: Oh, how pretty.

It’s still running with the same battery.

Female: Oh, really?

And she call me day before Easter, and I told her. And she said, “You kidding.” I say, “Yes, it has.” So that’s about... And they giving me bunch of stuffs here. All this. Mama made this. But this, that, is all thing that my friend had made and give me when I go over there. So that’s all I can say. No, no people speak Italian. Okay, this is when I was in Italy one time and they had dinner out up in the… They like to eat outside. So we were visiting the nice people. I hope this help you. I don’t know much more. Right now, it’s just… Oh, I have something else that a friend sent me. This is also… Some artist, I don’t know there. See this is churches in my hometown. That one. Oh, and this is all… See, it’s near Florence, so has lot a lot of art that when I was growing up, I did not appreciate. You know? Of course, it was World War Two so you can’t really do much.

Female: Right.

So, anywho. But I still have many friend, and I tell people over here I lived two lives, one in Italy and one here. ‘Cause I was twenty-five when I came. So.