By Jessica Martin '23
Growing up with parents from two very different cultures certainly makes life very interesting. My dad is from Ireland and my mom is from Colombia. Both of my parents tell me about things they did as a child and it is interesting comparing their childhoods to mine. For example, they both tell me about times they went to the beach, but they are very different experiences. My mom would go to the beach with her entire family and spend the whole day there doing activities such as playing various sports, fishing, and eating watermelon with ice cubes and sugar (a disgusting snack she wouldn’t recommend) before going home and then going back the next weekend. It was always warm, humid, and sunny in Colombia. Ireland, on the other hand, was not. The beaches in Ireland are surrounded by cliffs and the tide goes all the way up to the rocks early in the morning so there is no visible beach, just water. My dad never went to the beach as often as my mom since Ireland is always cloudy, rainy, windy, and the ocean water is absolutely freezing. Some of my favorite traditions are Colombian Independence Day on July 20 and Irish breakfast for dinner. On Colombian Independence Day we usually eat arepas. Arepas are basically pancakes that aren’t sweet, and you use them the same way you could with bread for a sandwich. You can put whatever you want in an arepa, but my family typically does chicken and cheese. We have Irish breakfast for dinner on Christmas Eve, St. Patrick’s Day, or any other special occasion. There are a few different variations of Irish breakfast, but my family has Irish sausages, Irish bacon called rashers, eggs, hash browns, and Irish bread that we toast. Both of my parents’ cultures are very different but interesting and give my household a lot of variety.