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<p>I grew up in an area with almost no recent immigrants except for a few Latinos. It is actually very common for people to say things like, “I’m German, so I eat meat and potatoes.” I find that a bit annoying, since most of them don’t even know what danke means, and they use Americanized pronunciations of their last names. </p>
<p>I try not to identify too closely with any nation in Europe because my ancestry is so mixed. I know for sure that it includes Germans, Irish, French, English, and Dutch, and there are most likely several others mixed in there somewhere. To further add to the confusion, my last name is rather rare, and doesn’t appear to resemble any word in any language. While it’s correct to identify myself only as American, it does make me feel a bit empty to think that I have no particular “old country.” This is why so many Americans are Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.</p>
<p>…Hopefully something in there made sense.</p>