As an adolescent, I took interest in my Mediterranean roots. My mother was born in Italy and my dad was born in Morocco. They lived in their home countries until they both moved to the U.S. when they became teenagers. As poor immigrants, they worked their way from the bottom to graduating college while speaking minimal English. From that point to now, they have had a tremendous amount of success socially and financially. What is more important is what they passed on to my sister and I, which makes us distinct. We were lucky enough to experience a culture and society that most Americans will never experience. From our births, my parents have taken my sister and I around the world on adventures most people would wish for. Starting in their home countries, they took us through Africa up through Europe over the next years. Every summer, I would first go to my house in Morocco and live a different life for those few months. I would have to adapt to their language of Arabic, adapt to the sun, and adapt to the culture. Adopting habits such as walking only seconds to the beach and speaking a different language made me feel like a different person. Naturally, I made friends with …show more content…
Like many African countries, Morocco had struggled to escape the period of sending children through college in order to give them a better life. I saw families who only made a hundred dollars a month and could barely put food on the table. I experienced what it was like to have to live in one room with multiple kids. Seeing that makes me appreciate the little things we have in abundance, like food and clothes. What I took the most away from was the drive to succeed. The ones who were able to make it through high school had the drive to go through college because they knew the consequences of not succeeding. Those experiences made me realize something like school, which a lot of us complain about, is taken for