Getting and keeping my immunity became very import...

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't angry some days. But I really have worked hard to put a lot of the anger and disappointment in the past.

So I think it's - what was important to me is that I found that I can't change the fact that people already have made an opinion about me. But I don't think that should stop me from trying to correct some of the misperceptions that are out there.

So it was sort of an odd time because I had been hired, but my paperwork hadn't gone through. So I worked as an intern during the government shutdown, as an intern, but I already had a job.

As you age naturally, your family shows more and more on your face. If you deny that, you deny your heritage.

I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.

My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.

In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.