Coming to Furman was \u201ckind of a culture shock\u201d for Yoana Reyes-Zapata \u201924, who grew up in a largely Hispanic community in Berea in Greenville County with parents who came to the United States from Mexico as children and whose stepfather came from Guatemala. Before college, she attended Legacy Early College, a charter school where most students were Black and Hispanic.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing in a predominantly white institution was really a different experience than what I was used to,\u201d Reyes-Zapata said, \u201cnot being able to fit in as I always did before in school or around town.\u201d<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t help that she started in the spring semester, missing the usual socializing and new friendships among first-year students in the fall. And then there was the forced isolation of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were all stuck in our rooms, and I never really got the chance to talk to people,\u201d said Reyes-Zapata, a communication studies major in the media studies track who is double-minoring in film studies and Latin American and LatinX studies.<\/p>\n
When she did get the chance, she found a welcoming campus with \u201ca lot of people wanting to learn about my background \u2013 not only learning more about my culture, but how to respect it,\u201d she said. She also found some fellow Legacy Early College alums, who introduced her to the Hispanic Outreach and Latinx Awareness (HOLA)<\/a> student organization.<\/p>\n \u201cI got to meet other Latin American students who happen to be of different ethnicities, such as Salvadorians and Costa Ricans and people of Afro-Latino descent,\u201d she said. \u201cGrowing up in Berea, among mostly Mexican Americans, I\u2019d never really gotten to learn about their cultures before.\u201d<\/p>\n This year, Reyes-Zapata is serving as president of HOLA. At the start of Hispanic Heritage Month<\/a> on Sept. 15, the organization hosted \u201cCenar y Celebrar\u201d (Spanish for \u201cDine and Celebrate\u201d), an event with food and music on the Trone Student Center front patio.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the Hispanic community, a lot of people share their love by cooking and sharing food,\u201d said Reyes-Zapata. \u201cSo, that\u2019s the one thing that we wanted to kick off Hispanic Heritage Month with, just showing our love to our students and our members.\u201d<\/p>\n