Hello, my name is Victoria.

I was born in Montevideo, Uruguay 24 years ago to two research biologists. I'll give a brief tour of Uruguayan culture as it applied to me, but I encourage you to research this amazing little country if you're interested. It's usually overlooked because of its size but is very rich in culture and history.

I attended a private school and spent most of my time outside of school with my grandparents while my mother was at work. The radio was always on, for every conscious second of the day. It was always on the same repetitive tango station and so their house sounded (and continues to sound) like this:

There was a lot of focus on art and music in my family. My father was a classical Spanish guitarist of concert caliber when he was a teenager but gave it up to pursue medicine on his mother's urging. Uruguayan culture as a whole is extremely dedicated to art. We have made an impressive amount of contributions to the arts for such a small country. We feature poets and artists (as well as historical figures) on our paper money.



Paintor Joaquín Torres García





Poet Juana de Ibarbourou

One of the best parts of Uruguayan culture is the food. My favorite chef, food writer, and somewhat anthropologist Anthony Bourdain did an excellent job of eating his way through the country. Vegetarians beware...

I could go on about the food for days on end. And to this day, with the exception of my family, the food is without a doubt what I miss most.

My parents split up when I was three and my father followed work to Paris, which I visited. When I was nine my mother and step-father accepted positions as researchers at UAB. And so we moved to Birmingham. You  might expect that it was difficult for me to leave behind everything I knew but I was an exceptionally adventurous nine year old. The novelty of exploring a new culture took some time to wear off. I started school immediately because I was so eager to make friends. It only took a few months of immersion to become basically fluent in English.

One of the best examples I have of culture shock is my first St. Patrick's Day before I learned to communicate. I showed up at school like any other day and a mob of children, all wearing green, began attacking me! They stopped pinching when I started crying. One of the first questions I learned to formulate was "When should I wear green?"

The biggest change for me was probably the focus on religion in the south. Uruguayans are very private about religious beliefs, and a large quantity are atheists. People don't usually attend church on a regular basis even if they are religious. Our family used to wonder, before asking, why the town looked deserted on Sunday mornings. I wasn't baptised and had never attended a service of any kind because my parents wanted me to make my own decisions about religion when I was old enough to. It was shocking to see it so out in the open, children reciting verse and asking me what church I attended.

Eventually I learned enough to stop being an oddity and the next few years went by exactly as expected.

I graduated from Homewood High School in 2005 and moved to New York that same summer. The first few months were difficult, but overall moving to New York was like coming home. The diversity in people and music and restaurants and events was astounding! I stopped feeling so foreign. I was suddenly a part of what makes New York such an interesting place.

I attended SUNY Purchase and majored in Literature. Purchase is not a typical liberal arts college. It has a small campus on a huge amount of land but is very close to Manhattan. It was originally designed to resemble an artist's retreat. Most students live on campus and rarely leave it, so it has the feeling of a very close knit community. There are no sororities or fraternities, not much in the way of sports. They have two major events annually, called Fall Ball and Culture Shock. Fall Ball is a mixture between a gay pride parade, drag show, and dance club that celebrates the LGBT community on campus (a large percentage). Culture Shock is a tiny version of Woodstock with carnival rides. Live music, cotton candy, and psychadelic drugs are the main components. (I don't condone drug use in the least! It's actually a major problem within Purchase and the art community overall.) As you can see, it's about as far as you can get from Alabama!

I moved back to Birmingham after three years in New York and did just about the most unexpected thing I could do: married my high school sweetheart after a seven year relationship.

Women in Uruguay usually reserve marriage and family for their thirties. They also keep their maiden names. Wedding ceremonies are usually performed at City Hall by a judge. I defied all of these cultural standards by marrying young, having a reverend preform the ceremony, and changing my name (although not yet legally because I hate waiting in line at the stupid DMV). However, I also don't fit into the southern standard because I don't plan on having children any time soon!

My husband was a professional chef for about six years before he decided to go back to school to study materials engineering at UAB. Which means I now have a personal chef! Food is very important to both of us and we love to eat just about any kind of food you can imagine. We have three cats (Magnus, Seamus, and Pixel) and a dog (Fable).

Magnus and Seamus

Pixel (who is considerably larger now)

Fable (6 months old and 50 lbs.)

I've been giving a lot of thought to the idea of a culturally prescribed lens. Most people probably don't think much about theirs but mine is inescapable. I used to think of it, not as a negative, but as something sad because there is no one single place I belong anymore. I've spent most of my life surrounded by people I felt I had little in common with. I've jokingly called myself a citizen of the world. Wherever I'm living there's another place to miss, another group of friends in a different part of the world. When I go back to Uruguay I'm foreign too because I'm not up to date on my slang or politics or gossip. I'm finally starting to see my "homelessness" as a positive. It's given me a perspective that very few people have. It's given me interests and experiences that have made me who I am. I'm thankful to be so open and willing to learn from others who aren't like me.