My Identity

My identity is sacred to who I am. Without it I have nothing that defines me as a person. Even though I am a mix of nationalities the one that I identify with and the one that is who I am is Greek. Being Greek to me doesn’t just mean that I have a big family, which I do, or I go to big Greek weddings, it means a lot more to me than that. English wasn’t even my first language, Greek was. From a young age, every Saturday and Tuesday I would go to Greek school, four hours on Saturday for culture and language, and two hours on Tuesday for dance. In addition to this I would go to church every Sunday and participate in a variety of Greek events. But the main focus of this all was my language. Even to this day I can speak mostly fluent Greek, I can also read and write it as well. I take great pride in this because not many people that I run into can speak Greek, let alone write it. The alphabet is totally different, the pronunciations are completely different, along with a multitude of dialects that are contained within the general language. This defines who I am, the culture that I was raised up in.  I cannot tell you how many times I have been to a Greek festival, wedding, even the Greek parade that they hold in NYC every year. The stories that my elders have about going through World War 2, having their entire villages destroyed, planes bombing everything around them. There is one story that sticks out of all of them, my Theo (Uncle) and his family were captured by German troops and were about to be shot, until one German said something to the other one and they left. That moment is really scary for me because had they have not survived I wouldn’t have been here at all. Going along with WW2, the one holiday that is one of my favorites is oxi day, or literally translated as no day. Every single European country had let the axis powers come through the country, all expect for Greece, this date commemorates the day where the tiny country of Greece stood up to one of the greatest military powers. It is celebrated on October 28^th every year in Greece and Cyprus. The culture of the Greek people is rich and diverse. The amount of traditions makes our culture unlike any other culture. We have been through it all and because of that we are the way we are today. My heritage is very important to me as it defines who I am as a person, without it I am just another blank face in the crowd. The thing is that everyone’s heritage and background is very personal to them. It is like a fingerprint, no two peoples background is the same.