How do you answer the question ‘where are you from’ if you’re a third culture kid?

A typical college ice-breaker consists of sitting in a circle with your new classmates and saying your name, where you’re from, and a fun fact about yourself. Usually, the fun fact tends to be the most troublesome part – the definition of the word fun becomes blurred, and you worry whether people are smiling out of genuine interest or courtesy (probably the latter).

Usually, though, none of this is the case for me. I feel anxiety rise at one of the more (supposedly) simple parts of the introduction: “Where are you from?” It should be easy enough, but when you’re a Miami-raised Venezuelan who grew up eating Spanish food and speaking Galician and think in English half the time and in Spanish the other, keeping it short becomes quite complicated. My solution is usually to say Miami – but that’s not really true. Venezuela is a second option –but that’s not the whole story either. “Galician” would take too long to explain (it’s not complete anyway), and “Spain” seems insufficient and much too general.

So I stick to Miami, I mean, after all, I’ve spent over half my life there and it tends to be easier for people to imagine: “That’s so cool! So do you, like, go to beach all the time? Do you go to Ultra, like, every year?” The answers to those questions are for another time (mostly, no), but this is a story about where I’m from, really:

My grandfather was born to a family of 12 kids in Lalín, which is a small town in Northern Spain famous for its bread and long winters. My grandmother was born a couple of hours away, in a town by the beach. They didn’t meet there; fate would take care of that. When Spain’s economy began going downhill, they took a ship to Venezuela – my grandfather, with his family, my grandmother, almost completely alone. They spoke Galician (which is now an official language); it kind of sounds like a mix between Spanish and Portuguese. They met at a dance (where my grandfather’s interest was peaked by the woman who refused to dance with him), and were married shortly thereafter.

Fast-forward a couple of years, and my mother is born in Caracas, Venezuela, into a community where Galician is as prevalent as Spanish. By then, my grandfather had started working as a mechanic, fixing auto parts with a skill that would, a few years later, allow him to open his very own shop.

Fast-forward again. My mother and father meet at a wedding (his story similar, but not identical, to hers, so that we may add some Italian blood to the mix).

Then I come along, a Venezuelan-Spanish-Italian Galician-speaking four-year-old that asks too many questions and takes too little naps. My family is doing great – my parents both work at banks and we live in one of the nicer areas of town. But a man you might have heard of, Chavez, has recently taken up residence in the president’s home. Not many can see what is to come, but five days before I turn six, my mother’s sixth sense peaks. She is pregnant with my little sister, and there has been some rallies against the government in which Chavez’s response had been to force people back with giant gushes of water. On a Sunday morning she turns to my father and says “We have to go”. He looks at her, unsurprisingly surprised, and asks “Why?” We were in Miami within five months.

Miami, FL, USA. The last part of that is a bit dubious. Technically the United States, but really, something new altogether. I turned six a couple of days after my arrival, and started kindergarten. I didn’t go to the bathroom at school for weeks – my teacher insisted that I ask in English, and I didn’t (couldn’t). I wanted to go back, to my friends and my grandparents and my aunt and my school. But obviously that didn’t happen. The first time I spoke English was at the mall, tired of not having friends. Within a year I was out of ESOL (English as a Second Language) classes, hanging out with new friends and using Windows Live Messenger to chat with old ones. I missed my grandparents and my aunt, but I didn’t cry every day anymore, and now I had a baby sister to take care of. I spoke English in school and Spanish at home, and switching gears every day at 3pm was physically painful. But my mother insisted that I not forget my Spanish, or Galician for that matter, and she pretended not to understand when I spoke to her in English (though I knew she did).

We were lucky to have a good lawyer, and two years and $20,000 later we had our residency.

Fast-forward 12 years, and I’m in the process of submitting my college applications. I have recently become a “citizen”. Despite my mom’s best efforts, my Spanish has taken some hits; I speak well, and make an effort to read and write, but it takes more effort. I shade in the “Hispanic” bubble on all my documents, since that about covers it.

A couple of months later, I am accepted to my first-choice school. It seems surreal, and my mother cries. My dad doesn’t, but I know he’s proud. He went to the best school in his country, too, but had to leave his fancy banking position to make sandwiches at Quizno’s so that my sister and I would be safe (she’s 13, now, by the way, and is struggling with Spanish more than I did, but I trust that my parents won’t let her forget). It’s been a while, so he’s finally doing what he loves again, and my mom is too; they’re computing numbers and developing databases for God-knows-what in God-knows-where.

Fast-forward to present day, and I am sitting in my dorm at Princeton, thinking about the miles that have been traveled and what has been given up to help get me here. This summer, I am going back to Spain. I’d like to perfect my Spanish, for me, but mostly for my parents, because I think it’s the least I can give back.

It can be unfortunately easy to forget where you come from, simpler to say Miami than to write 1000 words explaining the truth. But taking the time to think and talk about the real answer (whether yours or someone else’s) can open your eyes, and make you thankful. I’ve been lucky to meet people with stories as complex or more so than mine here at school, but there are people who may not have the opportunity, or time, to do that. I don’t have any particular reason to be telling you this story, but I figured it’d give some people a quick, five-minute chance at it.

And I guess if someone asks me where I’m from, I can send them this link.