Solving My 身份 Crisis Abroad

For my entire life, I have been torn between two identities. 在一个家庭中, 这是我的父亲:一个强壮的人, empowered African American man who is married to my Latina step-mom. 在另一个家庭, there’s my mother: a fiercely independent Jewish woman of European descent who is married to my step-dad, 一个在以色列出生和长大的人. 带着这样的情结长大, multicultural background exposed me to many rich cultures and lifestyles, but was also the most confusing part about my upbringing. I struggled to feel like I fully belonged to either group, ultimately feeling isolated from 这两个 sides. In some situations being a woman of color was my identifier, while my whiteness is what made me stand out in others. It often felt like I was a floater, fitting in everywhere and nowhere all at once.

美好生活

It wasn’t until my junior year of college that my perspective began to shift. 2016年秋天, I made the decision to 巴塞罗那留学 with the intention of discovering the world and ‘finding myself,’ similar to many of my fellow students. Yet, I had no idea how deeply that would become my truth.

As I lived in 巴塞罗那, the vibrant 多样性 of the city inspired me. A beautiful quilt of eclectic art, 文化与人, the Catalan capital is an international hub for all walks of life. 有一天,, I would wander through El Raval and watch skateboarders, 年轻人和老年人, 在艺术博物馆前碎尸, while the next day I would meet friends from Switzerland in a restaurant. No interaction and no person was the same, but nobody ever seemed to care. We were all infused with a creative electricity sparked by our differences.

Never stop exploring - the world and yourself

在那旋风般的几个月里, I learned a lot of lessons that will stick with me for the rest of my life: how to travel alone, how to navigate unfamiliar languages, how to make a foreign city feel like home. 然而, the most important discovery from my travels abroad was how to accept and feel secure in my mixed 身份. 巴塞罗那 taught me to own the things that make me stand out, and to not let anybody else define me. For the first time, I felt like I contributed to the complexity rather than feeling excluded from it.

I love those diverse, complex parts of me. I embrace the wild, curly hair I inherited from my mother and darker skin that comes from my father. I have learned to celebrate the features that are physical expressions of 这两个 my backgrounds, because they are reminders of the people I love as well as the places I come from. Like 巴塞罗那, I am colorful, multi-dimensional and refuse to be confined in a box.  Just as change within the city is constant, I too am determined to evolve, adapt and discover.

塞拉N. 是东航校友大使吗.  She studied abroad in 巴塞罗那 in the Fall of 2016 and is currently a senior at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

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