My Impression of Culture and Ethnicity

My impression of culture and ethnicity growing up was probably the typical white, american idea. I have a pretty big, Italian and Hungarian family with many uncles and aunts and tons of cousins and growing up we would spend the traditional Christmas at our house and Thanksgiving at my aunts. I was born at Bridgeport hospital and raised my whole life in Monroe, CT and was never really exposed to any place else, so I didn't know what other kinds of places where out there. I'm happy that my parents stuck with Monroe throughout my entire life because I grew up with almost every person as a child all the way through to high school. We never judged each other for what background we had, we just went to elementry school; colored in class and took the bus home everyday and talked about playground events that happened that day. Since i went from elementry school through all of middle school and high school with the same people, I lost friends I made new friends and i've kept a lot of the same friends. I was never with just one group of friends, I was always known as so "socialable" because I had friends of every kind. I was always nice and caring and I was always thinking about other people before myself. People did judge people for what they wore in middle school, that was the stage everyone went through. You know if you didn't wear "Abercrombie and Fitch", you weren't cool enough. Well, I was never like that, I stuck to my own style and it got me to having amazing friendships with great people. Going back into my family, well, at every family gathering there was always way too much food that no one could ever imagine finishing, but that was what my family was all about. Growing up, I thought of the family as good friends, for instance my cousins and I were always so close in age so we got along so well, our mothers would bring us everywhere together and do almost everything together.When I am surrounded by my family it is always a funny atmosphere, nothing is ever way too serious, its always laid back and relaxed. Whenever any of the kid's birthday's comes around every family has a family birthday party, still to this day at the age of 17 i'm having family birthday parties. It's the family tradition, and just being with family on your birthday is comforting and enjoyable. My background of Italian and Hungarian is always noticable, my grandmother is loud and the typical little Italian lady that makes to-die-for meals and we have a huge family that I probably couldn't even count. The way my parents raised me, I never thought differently of any one person and I was always myself no matter what.