A Citizen of the world

So I have been meaning to start writing for a while. Yet it is first now with a little baby at home, that I finally find my self having the time. This is my story, about my experiences told from point of view. When I started to write A Citizen of the World I had just moved to Mexico, and I was loving it. However the attitude of some of the people did shock me, not the majority by any means but it was still enough to catch me of guard. So as my blogs starts it takes us back four years in time when I had only lived here for five months. In a way I am grateful that it was not always easy since it made me sit down and actually start writing "A Citizen of the World".

Growing up in Sweden I was always known as the “foreign” girl, my name being Italian like my father, and my mother being Hungarian.

Whenever visiting friends and family in Hungary, my sister and I were known as the Swedish girls. In Italy they took us at face value, we were the girls that were born in Sweden but had a Hungarian mother and Italian father.

We spoke all three languages fluently, yet we were always put into categories, we were different from the rest.

During my studies in America once again, I was the girl nobody could quite place, or agree on where to place. My accent, look, style….what was I? My accent sounded different, perhaps I was British, or Irish or even Australian. I looked European, but from which part?

When they heard my name….off course I was Italian, and if I had my natural brown hair, it all made sense. I mean I could not possible be Swedish with brown hair and green eyes, not to mention my name. But then if I had blond hair then “off course I was Swedish, after all I had blond hair.”

Then finally in Mexico, people were clueless as to where I was from. My Spanish improved fast, I did not sound American…just foreign. With America being so close and my English so good…that’s it I was American.

The favorite pastime of some girls that I met was to falsely copy my accent and make it into an exaggerated American drawl, whenever I spoke Spanish, doing their utmost in attempting to make me feel silly and stupid for even trying. I thought at first that it most be a joke since I was pretty sure not to be back in high-school.

After years of explaining, trying to place myself and struggling to be accepted and to fit in, I have had it!

You can’t place me….because I was born to be a citizen of the world!