I am a student, an athlete, a member of my community, a son, a nephew, a brother. I am Victor from Potomac, Maryland and I am more than just a teenage boy. I am an explorer and cultural analyst. My entire life I have been living one big cultural experience. I am from the green pastures and tin roof houses in my mother’s home town of San Juan, Dominican Republic. I am from the fluffy snowflakes of Chile falling on my warm cheeks and melting away before I can grasp their beautiful shape. I am from the sleepless city of Lima, Peru. I have seen everything from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the deserts of Joshua Tree. But this is only part of my story, I have sailed the seven seas, spent an evening in the Amazon, and the next morning in China. How does a teenage boy fit that much travel into a mere 16 years of existence? Did I truly spend one night in Nepal, and the next morning in China? Perhaps not, but in my mind I am Ferdinand Magellan, master of the seas and first man to circumnavigate the globe. My fascination for different cultures and my own diverse background has lead me on an enterprise to study and learn as much as I can about the many different cultures that come together to build what we perceive as human nature. Whether it is in extrinsic foods, foreign films, language CD’s or foreign novels, I am constantly trying to enrich my knowledge of people. My story began early in middle school, when my interest in my own family’s history became aroused. The black and white pictures of people I had never met decorated our living room walls. These pictures were the gateway drug into my fascination for culture. I soon began taking French in school, and becoming very interested in social science classes.