BY JULIA GASPAR-BATES — Growing up in a small town in New South Wales, Australian resident Mandy Sheffer never expected that she would expatriate to the U.S. Born to British parents who had emigrated to Australia, Sheffer claims that she had a very average childhood: “I went to an all-girls Catholic high school. I went to college in Canberra and lived with my parents, which is quite common in Australia.” At 19, Sheffer participated in a cultural exchange to live and work at a ski resort in the U.S., a practice common with many young Australians. “I ended up at Wintergreen Ski Resort outside Charlottesville thinking that I would do childcare. However, when I arrived, I found out I was also a ski instructor. I mostly taught 2- to 3-year-olds to ski.” Soon after her arrival in Charlottesville, Sheffer met her now husband, Thomas, who worked at the resort on weekends while going to school. She claims that she knew right away that she would marry him. For the next two years, they visited each other’s country on extended tourist visas. In 2004, six months before Thomas graduated from college, they realized that they couldn’t continue the long-distance relationship indefinitely. [...]

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BY JULIA GASPAR-BATES — Growing up in Reykjavík, Iceland, Ólafur Jónasson experienced a lot of autonomy. The capital city has an estimated population of 123,000 and boasts a very low crime rate. Jónasson explained, “It’s quite safe — when [you] are 7 or 8, you start walking to school on your own. We were able to play outside; people weren’t restricted as kids here. When you go to high school in the U.S., you are treated like kids, but in Iceland you have a lot more freedom and independence. We are not told what to do.” Spending time outside in nature is a national pastime. “People are very outdoorsy. Icelanders play a lot of soccer and handball, but golf is one of the most popular sports.” Like many Icelanders, Jónasson and his family would leave the city on weekends to enjoy the vast expanse of nature. “My favorite place to visit in Iceland is Laugarvatn, which is about one hour from Reykjavík. My grandfather had a log cabin there so we would go there every week. There was a small lake, and we would go in the boat and fish and play golf.” Given its proximity to the Arctic Circle, [...]

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BY JULIA GASPAR-BATES — Growing up in the busy metropolis of Tehran, Nahid Soltanzadeh lived a privileged life. “I have a liberal family, and I had a lot of freedom that many girls my age did not have. There is a complex combination of religion and tradition that creates the fiber of what society expects of women in Iran.” Although her family did not practice Islam, Soltanzadeh noted, “The rules and the laws are made as if everyone is a Muslim, and you have to pretend that you are. Women have to wear loose clothing and the hijab [headscarf]. There are hijab police who drive around, and if you are not wearing one, you are taken to a police station where you sign a statement promising that you will wear it. A family member has to bring you the proper clothing to be released. I was arrested three times. After three arrests, you [may] have a criminal record. That didn’t happen to me, but it was much harder to get released after the third time.” While simultaneously studying engineering at university in Tehran and teaching Persian literature at a middle school, Soltanzadeh, along with her family, received U.S. green cards. [...]

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By JULIA GASPAR-BATES — Mirieth Valenciano hails from San Carlos, Costa Rica, a region renowned for dairy farms: “It’s only 100 km (62 miles) from San José, but because the roads are so bad, it takes about two hours to get there.” Valenciano’s childhood was steeped in family — she is one of  seven siblings and has many relatives — and filled with outdoor adventures. She would often visit her grandparents’ farm where she says she “would climb a tree, find a good branch and study from it. My friend and I would find a mud pit on our bikes and get dirty. I remember getting bitten by a goose.” Because of the relaxed nature of the culture, Ticos (a colloquial term for Costa Ricans) “are super friendly and welcoming, even more with foreigners. Any chance they have, they will go to the beach and find an excuse to be with friends. In Costa Rica, people will just show up; they never make an appointment. They’ll stop whatever they’re doing to feed you, give you coffee.” Costa Rica’s motto “pura vida” (meaning “pure life”) is reflected in the country’s infrastructure, which places a strong emphasis on education and environmental conservation: “When the [...]

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By JULIA GASPAR-BATES — Growing up in Luanda, Angola, in southwestern Africa was not always easy for Hyattsville resident Helder Almeida. “There was a lot of domestic violence in my family, so I grew up quite fast. When I was eight years old, my father pointed a gun at my mom. Seeing this changed the path of my life,” said Almeida. A go-getter with a desire to take charge of his life, Almeida started a graphics design business when he was 15 years old. At 19, he realized that he wanted to leave Angola for better opportunities. “I started looking for universities abroad because I had the vision of becoming someone successful, given what I had been through. I needed to leave Luanda, and I got accepted to Northern Virginia Community College’s ESL program. The U.S. is a country of dreams but is also a hard country to come to.” Upon arrival in Virginia, Almeida struggled as a new immigrant. “I didn’t know anybody. That was one of the lowest points. You come to America with no English, no family, no friends, and you have to fight to learn English because this is the number one tool you need.” Although he had [...]

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By JULIA GASPAR-BATES — Cooking became a passion for Hyattsville resident and entrepreneur Mickey Torrealba when he was 12. Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, Torrealba loved the smells and tastes of his mother’s cooking and began to help her in the kitchen, particularly during the holiday season when lots of family members would help make tamales. Unfortunately, his father disapproved of him cooking and encouraged him to study law at university. “In Venezuela the father controls everything because it’s a very macho country,” stated Torrealba. After two years at university, Torrealba realized that law was not his true path, and he announced that he was quitting. Since his father refused to continue paying for further studies, Torrealba moved out of his family home to forge an independent life for himself. This was a rather unusual practice in Venezuela, where people usually live with their parents until they get married. “I have two uncles in their 60s who never married and lived with my grandmother their whole lives until she died at 92.” Mickey Torrealba, the co-owner and chef at Cafe Azul, left Venezuela after political turmoil threatened his livelihood. After leaving home, Torrealba started to work in restaurants to raise [...]

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By JULIA GASPAR-BATES — Hyattsville resident Janine Dowden is no stranger to adversity. Growing up on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Dowden suffered trauma at age 12 when she survived a car accident that left burns on 65 percent of her body. “My aunt was living in Washington, so she assisted in getting me to Children’s Hospital. I spent eight months in the hospital the first time. Every year after that until I was 18, I would come to the U.S. for follow-up treatment because I had osteomyelitis and 90 percent of my bones were infected,” said Dowden. Dowden also experienced a political coup d’état as a child when Grenada “became militant — there was the people’s revolutionary army.” After leading Grenada for several years as a police state, Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was assassinated by his own army. “The morning of his death, a neighbor called my mother and said that she had a bad dream and recommended that [my mother] not send us to school. A lot of people were killed. We could hear the tanks shooting because Fort George was only 3 ½ miles away.” Then, in 2004, when Dowden was pregnant with her daughter, she lived [...]

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By JULIA GASPAR-BATES — Claudia Simasek has many happy memories of growing up in the rural town of San Francisco de Macoris, which is about 2.5 hours from Dominican Republic’s capital city, Santo Domingo. “It was a very communal environment. There were no walls in the backyard. All the kids in the neighborhood would play together. All the neighbors would invite you to eat. It was normal for the electricity to go off for several hours during the day, so when there was no light in the house, people would gather in the street and talk and wait for the lights to come back on. I was living in a world where there were no computers or cell phones. People are very hands-on, so you learn skills to take care of your environment. Those kinds of things for me are precious.” Although Simasek had been traveling to the U.S. since the age of 14 to visit extended family, love eventually led her to immigrate here. She met her husband, Ben, a Peace Corps volunteer, in 2010 when she brought students to the rural Dominican town where he was working. “When I first saw Ben, I thought he was part of [...]

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By JULIA GASPAR-BATES — Growing up in the small colonial town of Cotija, Michoacán, in central Mexico, Paulina Valencia Quiroz recounts a peaceful upbringing among “houses built 500-600 years ago and horses that would sometimes wander in the streets.” Valencia grew up in a large family of 11 children and was fortunate to have friends and neighbors who all lived really close. She said in an interview, “I never felt afraid of going out because I had connections with everyone who surrounded me and who would greet me.” Her parents were small business owners — her father owned the only fabric and crafts store in town and her mother, a clothing store. Valencia spent part of her childhood working for them, which reinforced her strong sense of community. Life in Cotija was full of festivals. Valencia recalls celebrating many holidays throughout the year.  “In June there is a big festivity where the town paints wood chips, and [people] walk through town making prayers and singing. The streets are decorated. In December, there is the cheese festival where they sell mezcal.”   Cotija also attracted many foreign visitors and religious pilgrims.   “My parents welcomed a lot of foreigners to our house. I [...]

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By JULIA GASPAR-BATES — Being an outsider has been a lifelong reality for Gautam Bastian. Born in Delhi, India, to an Anglo-Indian father and Maharashtrian mother, Bastian spent much of his childhood within the Christian tradition, which is a minority religion in a predominantly Hindu country. The family also moved frequently to different regions of the country.  “My father is an Anglo-Indian, who are descendants of the first Europeans who came to India and had children with Indians. They became a separate group because of the caste system so they would marry amongst themselves,” said Bastian. “My mother was raised in a Marathi-speaking family and went to Anglican school in Bombay. My parents had a love marriage, which was unusual during the time, as arranged marriages were the norm.”  During his first nine years, Bastian moved with his family between Delhi, Bombay (Mumbai) and Patna, in the eastern state of Bihar. While living in Patna his father became ill and Bastian moved to Bombay, on his own, to live with his grandparents. “My parents stayed in Patna for another year, but they ended up moving to Bombay. We lived in a 450- square-foot apartment with my parents, sister, grandparents and uncle, [...]

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