 I was born in LA but later on we moved to Virginia and it was a culture shock in the sense that in LA, while it is obviously the United States, there are a lot of other Latinos there and it's a more accepting society of Latino culture. When I moved to Virginia, it felt like everyone was white and I remember one time in class there were a couple of other Latino kids in the class with me and we were on the playground and we were talking about something in Spanish and one of the teachers came and came in and told us don't speak Spanish, you have to speak English and I think that was one of the first times where it kind of hit me that I couldn't be myself per se because I never even thought about it speaking Spanish in LA is like speaking English anywhere else and to know that like I felt like there were limits in terms of what I could do was not an experience that I forgot I still remember that moment and it's one of the moments that can I think back to whenever I feel like what it was like when I was trying to figure out who I was as an American and my identity was kind of hard for me to figure out I normally didn't associate myself as Salvadoran growing up because I didn't really know that many other people and also when I would go back to a Salvador they would always see me as an American they wouldn't see me as a Salvadoran but when I would come back and grow up you don't actually kind of quite fit in in the US because you're not Caucasian so I always had a struggle of why don't look like a lot of people that I grew up with but people back from my country of origin from my family where my family from didn't necessarily recognize me as one of their own but as I've grown up I've embraced the fact that I am an American and that's unquestionable and I recognize where I came from and that's an important part of me regardless of you know anyone else's opinions