As a child, my Portuguese identity was a significant part of my life. I grew up making wine with Avô in his basement, I spent time at the Holy Ghost Club making malasadas with my Avó’s friends, and, like any Portuguese child growing up, I was fed a lot of delicious food. And while I could understand Portuguese fairly well, I was never able to speak it. Instead, when spoken to in Portuguese, I would always respond in English. And while I would like to blame it on my surroundings (as I was never exposed to it in my Massachusetts elementary school, and my mother never forced me to speak it), I knew it was entirely my fault for not speaking the language. As I reached middle school, my parents gave me the option to take a Portuguese 101 class at my local community college and I decided to give it a go. After sitting through classes surrounded by people twice my age, I was finally able to spark the language within me, and pretty soon, I was speaking to everyone in my family in Portuguese (after being surrounded by it my whole life, it came to me fairly easily). I never used to consider the Portuguese an important aspect of my life, but when I was in high school, everything changed.