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My family ancestors have come from different parts of Europe, despite of my name being a completely italian. Nathalia Merotto.

In my mom's family side, her dad's ancestry has come from Spain and her mom's from Germany and Italy. Unfortunately, I do not have much contact with this side of the family. Everyone got split apart once my grandparents got divorced. That happened when my mom was only 9 years old. She says her father went to live with another family, and they never recovered the contact, even after all these years.

At least, my mother was close to her grandma, named Natalia. They were very important to each other, but she died years before I was born. In honor to her dear grandma, my mom named me Nathalia.

In my dad's side, both my grandpa and my grandma got Italian ancestry. Whatsoever in my grandma's bloodline, there's an unexpected thing: my great-great-grandmother was ukrainian.

Spanish, Italian and German ancestry are not that uncommon in Brazil, but i have never met anyone who's family comes from Ukraine too. Until nowadays, my grandma knows how to speak Ukrainian, and she and her siblings lament the war happening at their own grandma's homeland.

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I have interviewed my dad's mom, Maria Czar, about the origins of our family.

She told me how her grandmother, Madalena Matkoski, was only 15 years old when she came from Ukraine to Brazil in a boat, trying to run away from the war. The long trip lasted months, and during that time on the boat, she met my great-great-grandfather. The time passed by and they fell in love. The two of them ended up marrying while still on board! Once they got to Brazil, they started a family together, working on the fields.

She also told me about her parents, and how her father, Paulo, was a very grumpy man and was the one teaching their life lessons. Her mom, Melania, on the other side, was the one helpful parent to her 6 kids: Maria, Marilene, Margarette, Ambrósio, Irineu and Dionísio. They were very poor at the time, and life with all those other children to share food and toys with wasn't easy at all.

When she grew up, she became a math teacher and married my grandfather. They had 3 kids: my two aunts Fabiane and Gislaine, and my dad, Samuel. Life was taking a good way, and the problems with money weren't as serious, but a tragedy happened.

My grandfather, Maurizio, was a truck driver, and he spend days out of home, taking stuff from a place to another. You must be thinking : "He got into a accident." But that's just the fake story they told me when I was little. What really happened is that when my father was soon to be 3 years old, his dad got murdered. My grandma remember his husband telling her that a co-worker of his had threatened him. "If you take this one package, I am going to kill you!". He thought the co-worker was kidding, and didn't take it too seriously. He accepted to drive the package to it's final place, and in the end, he was murdered. The murderer was never caught, but my grandma's sure it was the co-worker until today.

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The Borscht soup was a recipe that came from my great-great-grandmother, being passed through the generations. It's a very common soup in Ukraine and it's basically a beet soup, but you can add carrots, potatoes and cabbage, if you want. My dad always has it with cheese though!

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Speaking of him, we have two special songs.
"Exagerado", by Cazuza and "Viva La Vida", by Coldplay.

He always sang Exagerado to me, since I was little. So it has become our song, and we sing it together in the car every trip.

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Viva la Vida has another reason. My dad says he used to play this song at our old house, and I would grip into our big dinner table's legs and start dancing to it when i was only two years old. This song has been followed me ever since, and I never get bored of it.

I sometimes even feel emotional and nostalgic due all the moments when those songs have played.

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Coldplay - Viva La Vida (Official Video)

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My mom, her dad and her mother at a cousin's wedding.

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My grandma and my aunt Gislaine at the beach