Even though I had Azzie blood flowing in my veins, this country felt totally foreign to me. My mother had severed her ties with her "heathen" relatives in Aztlan when she emigrated north with my father and grandmother. I was born in Seattle and had been raised to be a good Catholic girl by parents who did everything they could to assimilate and fit in. Rendered cultureless by the UCAS melting pot, I had nothing in common with the people I saw on the streets around me. Their clothing, gestures, attitudes—even the pitch of their voices and the way they walked—were completely alien to me. Even the weather didn’t feel right.