Evagelia “Evi” Economo and her family add to Christmas supper many traditional Greek dishes such as baklava, melomakarona, marzipan, and orzo. Evi mixes all of her cultures during the holidays, Greek, Mexican, and American, though favoriting her Greek heritage with her dual-citizenship in both the United States and Greece.
“Greek culture is just so rich,” Economo said. “Whenever I’ve seen my grandparents
pictures they’ve taken, it makes me want to go. The buildings are all white and the white with the blue of the water together, gorgeous!”
With her family scattered between Greece and Wichita Falls, Economo stays connected with her family’s hearth.
“My grandparents on my mother’s side, which are all greek, were born and raised in Athens, and we have a lot of family in Cyprus too,” she said. “We will do long distance phone calls, we pay for all that, and when my grandmother went to Cyprus to see her family, she brought stuff back. We get sent candy and marzipan in from Athens from my family.”
Evi fuses together American and Greek in her very day attire to pull her close to home.
“I also wear greek stuff, like a ring or a bracelet or a necklace I got from Greece,” she
said. “I’ll use greek things to do stuff for myself.I guess it imposes both cultures on me like
style.”
At home, Evi even switches her languages between English and Greek.
“Grenglish!” she said. “We will be talking about something and we will be speaking in
English and then we will start speaking in greek and then we will fuse it together. It gets kind of
weird because we get looks from people when out, and then they ask if I’m Mexican and I say
yes, but I don’t know Spanish, I’m speaking greek!”
Despite living in America her whole life Evi yearns to visit her grandparents’ homeland.
“It’s way too hot [to live there!],” she said. “I’m white as a ghost, but if I go I will come
back and I will be sunkissed, golden, and olive skinned. I will be greek looking, but I just don’t
like the heat.”
Evi wishes to travel around Europe in the nearing future for college exchange.
“I want to be in like London where it is cold and rainy and perfect,” she said. “I want to go to University of Texas because they have the best study abroad system in the U.S. or State, either way it still is huge, and especially because I want to do dramatic arts so I want to study in England.”
Evi plans to enroll in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts ,a highly prestigious university
in the UK she said. Evi’s mediterranean heart shines through in her artistic abilities.
“The fact that I am greek maybe inclined me to be more artistic, because I love art,” she
said. “I’ve been really into wanting to major in theater, and I just try to use Athenian themes.”
In all she does, Evi’s love for her prominent heritages makes itself known in her actions
and words used when describing Grecian culture.
“We are very imaginative, se we always dream big,” she said. “We fight for them, and we are extremely complicated, and we love it.”