Growing up, I was always surrounded by white kids. My classes had some mix here and there, but suburban Illinois didn't have much to offer as far as diversity. I knew my dad was darker than my friends' dads, my last name was a little different, and my grandparents had thick accents, but I never really understood what that meant.

Being raised in a white community, I was rarely given the chance to celebrate all sides of myself. My family would visit my lolo and lola and eat chicken adobo, but I was never exposed to Filipino culture. I would get excited at the mention of a Filipino actor or singer, and I knew what the flag looked like, so that was enough. For me, being Asian was just an extra box ticked on standardized tests.

I first began to understand that I wasn't fully white in middle school. One day, I told my classmates that Dora the Explorer's last name was Marquez and they laughed and started to call me Dora. Their teasing bothered me, but I didn't understand why.

High school continued to reveal that I was different from my peers. My biology teacher was never able to pronounce my last name, and kids in Spanish class accused me of cheating because I was "Mexican." I never learned about the Philippines until my U.S. history textbook said cages of "savages" were presented at the 1904 World's Fair.

So once I came to college, I felt like I hadn't done enough. I now went to a school with students of all different backgrounds where cultural clubs were more than just eating tacos. People were proud of who they were and weren't afraid to make these parts of themselves known.

For the first time, I went to a school with a mix of Asian students. Others began recognizing me as Filipino without my having to say it, and I started getting asked if I had been to the Philippines or if I knew Tagalog. The answers were always a flustered no, and I began to wonder whether I was Asian enough. These students were more familiar with their ethnicities, and I hadn't met a "full Filipino" outside my family until now. I thought I had been surrounded by culture in my military community, but in reality, I only knew how my white friends lived.

I have transformed a lot since starting college, and this includes embracing my Filipino side. Whether it's through writing research papers or finally trying other Filipino food, I'm trying to learn more about my culture. For too long, I've lived oblivious to an entire half of my family's heritage and felt like I wasn't a "real Asian." I'm not ungrateful for the way I was raised, but I'm determined to find the parts of myself that I had never bothered looking for.