What I have learned from this experience first and foremost, is that people are very proud of where they come from and eager to share their culture with someone not from it. Part of me I guess, assumed it was difficult for people coming here from another country but I never realized just how difficult it can be having been born here a white American raised in a middle class family.

I knew coming into this assignment that I have lived a very sheltered life just from traveling outside of Utah and experiencing places like the East Coast, the Bayou and the South. I realize now that these experiences would have been vastly different had I not been born white regardless of whether I was born an American or not. The assumption that was challenged the most for me, was the assumptions that kids born from immigrants have it easier than their immigrant parents. I found out in some cases it is harder for them than their parents and at the very least just as hard.

While I have spent some time researching this culture with the hopes to move there someday I learned more from this interview than I have in three years of reading online about Valencia, Spain. The biggest shock to me was the cost of the dresses they wear, how long and how often they wear them, as well as just how much they celebrate, anything and everything. Family is everything in Spain even more so than it is here and this just makes me want to move and immerse myself in the culture that much more and I look forward to the day this will be possible.