Angela Xerakias

My Big Fat Greek.....Life

As many may have figured from my last name starting with an X and sounding like something you’ve never even heard of I am here to tell that even though many may think that my life is certainly compared the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” there are many things that are very different in comparison. For one, my dad doesn’t chase people around the house with windex cleanse and spray us with it if we have an ailment, even though that was pretty funny 🤣and another big thing that many non-Greeks believe after watching this movie is that all Greeks must marry within the Greek community. Well I beg to differ on that one. My godmother actually married an Italian man, hence making my godfather a non-Greek and my two god sisters half Italian and half Greek which in my book is a pretty cool mix. My back story starts like this; my dad first came to the US in the late 1970’s when he was only about 18 years old. He lived in Jersey City, New Jersey and took the ferry into Manhattan and worked as a dishwasher just trying to make ends meet. A few years go by, circa 1983 he goes back to the motherland to become a godfather himself, to who else, my older cousin George. Mind you my aunt set this up completely because she wanted him to meet my mother. And so the story goes that my dad met my mom at my cousins baptism and year later they were married. Eventually they moved back to Jersey and three years later they had my sister, Maria. When she was three they moved to Long Island, NY and two years after that they decided to have me 😳🙂🤣. At the time my dad and uncle Mike had opened up their little version of a coffee shop in Forest Hills, Queens, (which is still there folks go check it out it’s the bomb diggity!). It’s still there to this day even though with this whole corona virus going on we are still doing deliveries and take outs so please go check us out! We need all the help we can get!! But anyway, growing up with 2 immigrant parents from Greece has been totally normal besides the fact that I had to go to Greek school and Greek dance and Sunday school on sundays I still did the normal everyday kid things. I played clarinet in the elementary school band and I was even a Girl Scout. But let me not bore you any further, yes my family is huge and loud and I love them all to death. Hope you like my story 🙂🧐