“No matter where I go I’m always an outsider. That’s cool.”
When I was young, I was Born in Venezuela, South America but my parents are Lebanese Arabic. So while I was in Venezuela I wasn’t considered to be Venezuelan, though I was born there. They would call me Turkish, though Lebanon is not close to turkey. When I came here I picked up English pretty quick and was taken off the special program for foreign students. But I still had a pretty strong accent and I wasn’t interested in socializing with other kids because they found me kind of strange.
A few years later I decided to visit Lebanon, to visit my home country of my parents, heritage. When I was there I was considered an American though I can speak Arabic and a bunch of other languages. I was still not considered to be Lebanese. I’m also Christian, not Muslim. The majority of them are Muslims. They see how eccentric I look and automatically assume I’m a foreigner. No matter where I go I’m always an outsider. That’s cool. I’m not extremely into politics. I don’t vote into the system horrible people like Donald Trump.
Originally when I was in south America I would watch anime, not realize it was anime because it was all in Spanish. I just assumed it was cartoons. When I got here, my first friends I made in middle school and they were a majority of Japanese. So until high school I was surrounded by Japanese people. Originally I wasn’t that interested in watching anime, My best friend was Japanese and she didn’t speak much English. So I started learning Japanese to communicate with her. She got me into reading manga and watching anime and we became very close because of that. Years after that, I started to get attached to certain characters that’s when I learned I wanted to get involved with the cosplay community.
I have quite a few of alpacas. I have a big alpaca named Will from Hannibal. I have a tinier alpaca named Hannibal. I tried to color code them by characters that I love. They are a constant reminder of the culture I like. Just like the anime community, and what not, alpacas are really popular and they are cute. I strive to be cute when I cosplay but at the same time manly. The majority of my alpacas are boys. I made them boys. The majority of characters I play our guys. I want to be cute but manly.