One of the things that makes me so proud to be an American is how diverse we are as nation. I love that we are one huge country filled with immigrants from all over the world, which now means that our citizens are more and more often made up from a big ol' melting pot of genes. I am the perfect example of a new age American. My mom's parents emigrated from China to California in the late 1940s, after they were arranged into a marriage, in search for a better future for their growing family. My dad's dad claims a Scotch-Irish ancestry, but his family had been settled in the USA for as long as we can trace back. My dad's mom's parents, however, emigrated from Sicily to an Italian settlement in New Jersey in the 1920s in order to get away from the ever imposing Mafia. It's safe to say that my family's history is prettttty darn cool.
Needless to say, when we were trying to decide where else to go besides Rome during our Italy trip, we knew that we were going to have to include Sicily in our itinerary. The whole time that we were in Rome I was getting really excited to finally hop on a plane to visit the fiercely independent island where the Midili family originated from. My parents decided to make Catania our home base in Sicily. I had no idea what to expect before we arrived, and quickly learned that Catania was going to be unlike any other Italian city I had visited before. But more on that later.
