My earliest memory is of my abuelita’s kitchen. When I close my eyes, I can see my family gathered around the table, sleeves rolled up, spreading masa over corn husks in preparation for Christmas dinner. I can hear my aunt’s hearty laugh and smell her perfume. The kitchen is always filled with laughter in my memory, with the children playing in the next room and the unmistakable smell of warm tortillas on the comal.

This memory is one of the most pure that I have, and for a long time, it was mine alone.

My name is Gabrielle Steenberger, and I am a Junior at Indiana University Bloomington. I am studying Film Production, with minors in Sociology, Spanish and Latino Studies. I am biracial, my mother being Mexican and my father American. At first glance, most people wouldn’t label me as stereotypically Mexican. I have light skin and freckles, and while I speak Spanish, English my first language.

Before I came to IU, I had never met anyone like me. In fact, I didn’t have much contact with my Mexican heritage outside of my family until college. My family lived in suburban neighborhoods throughout the Midwest while I was growing up, and people of color were few and far between. And while I was fair-skinned like my classmates, I discovered early on that I was different from them.

One day, in elementary school my mother sent me leftover frijoles for lunch, and my classmates noticed how I ate the beans with nothing but a torn up tortilla as my utensil. I never had many friends growing up, and sometimes I wonder if that would have been different had there been more culture in the towns I lived in.

But that changed my freshman year at Indiana University. I was invited to a party, a party I would later find out was a full-on Mexican house party. Groups of people stood outside the house, laughing and throwing their arms affectionately around one another’s shoulders. Inside, people were dancing to music being pumped into the basement by large speakers. I had never seen people dance like that in real life, they were really dancing. Couples turned and moved together as if it was the most natural thing in the world, the rhythm in their bones and the music in their blood. That night changed something for me, I was drawn to these people, and being with them felt right.

Soon I began to make friends in the Latino community. I visited La Casa, the Latino Cultural Center on campus, and many faces became familiar to me. As the months went on, I learned bachata, a romantic Dominican dance, and fell in love with it. I soon learned to dance many styles, and became more in touch with traditional Mexican music.

I found the longer I spent around this community, the more I discovered I had in common with them. Yes, music, language, and food, were easy to point out, but it was more than that. We had shared experiences, and we all had a certain grit to us. We were hardworking, and dedicated. So many of us came from immigrant parents, or were immigrants ourselves, and so we took nothing for granted. Each and every person I have met in the Latino community is whole-heartedly dedicated to their education, por la raza, for our people.

We have pride in where we come from.  We celebrate our culture every single day, not only when we dance and sing “Adios Amor” at parties in crowded houses, but in the classroom. We are diverse in our fields of study, and our interests, but one thing remains the same; Latinos on Indiana University’s campus are bringing diverse thought, hard work, and contributing to an impressive 3.79 average GPA of minority students on IU’s main campus.

Every day I am reminded how blessed I am to be surrounded by compassionate, curious, like-minded people. There are thousands of communities at IU, endless opportunities for connection and friendship and companionship. For me, the IU Latino community filled a void I felt within myself; connection to my culture. Through the acceptance of this community, I have made IU my home.

My community is a family, and I am thankful every day that Indiana University has provided me not only opportunity for education, but also a place I could make my own. I know these peoples’ families, where they come from and where they want to go. I look forward to the day when we are all alumni, when we can reminisce over our college years together and celebrate all we have accomplished since then.

I am thankful to be a part of a community that celebrates birthdays, complete with birthday cake and Las Mañanitas, the traditional Mexican birthday song. I am thankful for friends who are always willing to dance with me, friends who I can’t wait to call after I land the interview, the job, the grade. I am thankful for waking in the morning to the smell of warm tortillas and chilaquiles for breakfast.

Indiana University is my home, these people are my family, and each day they push me to be better. Today, and for years to come, the family I have made at Indiana University will impact me each and every day.