Internship in downtown Detroit

The highlight of my day had to have been stopping to chat with Steve, the security guard outside the Compuware World Headquarters. He is a joyful older black man who says hi to everyone that passes by the parking lot of the building. I talked to him today just like I did two Mondays ago while I waited for my vanpool to leave back to Ann Arbor. Today was a long day. I woke up close to 6 in the morning, just to arrive at Sam's club where my vanpool began it's journey to downtown Detroit, 55 minutes away. I started the internship at 8 a.m. up until 4 p.m. without a lunch break working on contact information for different publications, all of this without pay. I sacrificed my entire Monday an hour away from where I reside to get the opportunity of working with the Consulate of Mexico with Spanish-speaking individuals helping out their Mexican nationalists that reside in the surrounding Detroit area. Often, I get labeled Mexican because of my appearance. I often think to myself, "I am not Mexican, I'm a Texan. I am a Xicano." I have a disposition of being a third-generation American with the label of being a Mexican by any new person that I strike a conversation with. Life is unique in the sense that I am working with Mexican nationalists, but I am the outsider. I am American, Americanized, and a Texan. I helped my boss translate "Talking points of the Mexican Government" from Spanish to English. The communication between us is shaky because of my inability to speak Spanish fluently and his inability to speak English fluently. How can we be so similar but so different at the same time?