The silence of the crowd was very loud as the announcer called out our church dance group onto the stage. I knew it was time to put on my biggest smile and get ready to do what I've spent weeks and years practicing for; dancing folklore. This is what I have spent a large portion of my life doing. Every Sunday, for two hours in the evening I would go to my church for folklore practice, a traditional Serbian dance, with other kids I had grown up dancing with. When I first started folklore and for a large portion of it growing up, I thought it was about simply memorizing dances to perform them in front of friends and family later. However, as I entered high school, I realized it wasn't simply about that. It had actually always been bigger than that. It was about learning discipline through giving up my school's Friday night football games for an extra practice before a recital, making everlasting memories with kids whose families had also immigrated from our little country in the Balkan region of Europe to flee from a war, learning the true meaning behind the songs we danced to, and most importantly learning about our culture to pass it down to future generations of Serbian children just as our families had. From the moment it registered to me that the handmade costumers were sewn together by mothers and grandmothers in Serbia and here in Chicago, the event decorations put together by dads and brothers instead of hired employees, the parents working the food and drink stations at recitals, I realized being Serbian wasn't about having to explain to people where your country was when they asked, "What's that?" Rather, it was about carrying and embracing the honor, sacrifice, and pride my ancestors had when they started their own families in little Serbian villages. My identity as the daughter of two Serbian immigrants has shaped me into who I am today and the way I approach life. It enables me to understand that there is always a deeper meaning and story to what is percieved at the surface.