I am on my way to Venice, Italy. I haven't been there since 1965. I am trying to keep awake, because the airport shuttle is going to pick Barry and I up at 4:30 PM. The last time I was in Venice, I stayed at a youth hostel with a curfew, but the day in Venice was long and filled with the beauty of history. It was a different world for this Chicana from Chicago. My best friend's in high school were all Italian, but they knew nothing of their origins. They never really talked that much about Italy, but for that matter I never talked that much about Mexico. It was so far away for both of us. We were what the Japanese Americans call the Sansi. I hope I spell that right.

My high school friends were Calabrase and Secilian. My best friend Jackie Landee was Italian. A racist, because she knew no different. She could be described as having, "el Nopal en su cara" or as I would say, "Her dark olive skin on which was written genetic code of centuries of Greek, Roman, and Muslim conquerers, was darker than mine. However she had the audacity to tell me that I should not have told some guy at Ahmad Jamal's, The Bird House's bar in 1958 that I was Mexican.

The tragedy of it all was that, most of my girlfriedns like myself, lost our language, history and ethnenticity. When I got to Italy many years later, I realized how much they had lost. I love Italy. Every city is a page of history. And now I am going back, but also, I will be crusing on a ship through the Greek Islands.

I am leaving about an hour . So I'm going to kill some time by trying to post pictures of my student.