Ariana Perez-Diener

I’ve lived in Goshen most of my life, but I was actually born in Puerto Rico. We moved here when I was three years old. We lived on the south side of Goshen by the Industrial Park. When my sister was born, my parents realized they wanted us to keep our Spanish so we started speaking just Spanish at home. My mom taught us to read and write in English when we were at home too, so we learned both languages.

During my childhood, my brother and I played outside a lot. We had a big backyard with a pine tree that had a hole inside where we would climb inside and play house. Whenever there was a rainstorm, we would beg our mom to go outside and run around in the rain with boxes over our heads.

I’m really passionate about the environment. I want to keep the earth as it is so that my grandchildren can experience the same things I did, and their grandchildren as well. My mom has probably played a big part in this. She has taught me that sometimes it’s important to make sacrifices. She keeps the heat at 63 or 64 degrees in the winter time and would just tell us to grab sweaters. I think this taught me that it’s okay not going to be comfortable all the time.

What I love about Goshen is there’s a lot of different parks and trails around to go for a walk, bike ride, or run. I really like that there’s a lot of trees in Goshen. I know there are efforts to get more tree cover which is really cool.