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The sun is just starting to come up in Pacho Nuevo, where I live
with my Mom and Dad, and my sister Ingrid.
We put up lights for Christmas, and Dad says we'll take them
down after Candelaria's Day.
Today is a school day, so I have to get up at 6 o'clock.
My name is Guadalupe and I'm 8 years old.
This is the uniform we wear in our school.
After I get dressed Mom combs my hair,
which is a big job because it's so long.
Grandma brings me two magazines that I can use at school to cut
out pictures for a class assignment.
She says I can pick the one I think has the best pictures.
For breakfast I'm having toast with jelly, milk,
and fresh papaya, which is a fruit that first grew here
in Mexico, and now is grown all over the world.
Then I brush my teeth.
It's time to leave for school, but first I want
to say goodbye to Grandma.
Ingrid wants to go, too, but she's only 4,
so she has to stay home with Grandma
until Mom and Dad get back.
Grandma and Grandpa live next door.
Pacho Nuevo is near the top of a small mountain,
and we walk for about 15 minutes to our school
down in the center of town.
This week Dad will be leaving to take a group of workers
to Monterrey, where they're going to clean movie theaters.
It takes more than a day to get there,
and the job may take several weeks, so he may not be home
for almost two months.
The walk seems short going to school.
But it seems a lot longer coming home!
A parent usually walks younger children to school.
This is a public school, so that means my parents don't have
to pay for me to go here.
School starts at 7 and we get out at noon.
We have 29 students in our third grade class.
Today we're studying history.
Mexico had some of the greatest cultures
in the world way before the Spanish conquerors came 500
years ago.
Our teacher says 1500 years ago the city
of Teotihuacan near Mexico City had more
than 200,000 people living there, which made it one
of the largest cities in the world.
At about that time a huge fire burned almost all
of the buildings that weren't stone, where families
and craftspeople lived.
For some reason it seems the city was never rebuilt,
but we don't know why.
Our teacher says archaeologists are studying questions
like this.
She says old cities like this show the same love of art
that we still have in Mexico today.
Now we're talking about some of the things the Spanish soldiers
and explorers brought to Mexico,
like horses, gunpowder and steel.
The Spanish had never seen corn, chocolate, beans, tomatoes
or vanilla before, and they took them back to Europe.
At about 11 o'clock some parents set up tables in the school yard
to sell food that they've made for the students.
I'm getting tacos, which are tortillas filled with things
like meat, cheese and beans.
They cost two pesos.
The money we pay goes to buy things for the school.
All grade school kids in Mexico get free books
from the government, but we have to pay
for our uniforms and lunches.
I'll go to high school in a nearby town,
but some kids will have to quit school before then
to help their families.
It's wintertime here, and we often start out the day
in sweaters or jackets, but by noon we usually don't need them.
It never freezes in our area, but there's always snow on top
of the mountain that we can see from here,
because it's a lot higher than our village.
After lunch we line up to go back to class.
We take turns cleaning the school yard.
Keeping things clean is also what Mom's doing while I'm
in school.
She washes our clothes
by rubbing them with soap and water.
Dad carries the water from Grandpa
and Grandma's faucet next door.
She rinses the clothes with clean water.
Then she hangs them to dry.
The clothesline is made with two plastic ropes
that are twisted together.
Mom just unwinds a little spot in the line and tucks an edge
of the wet clothing in between the two lines.
When she lets go, the lines twist back together
and hold the clothes.
When they're dry, she can take them down with a little tug.
Most of Mexico is pretty dry, but we're lucky
because our state, Veracruz, has plenty of water.
Our teacher says that's because hot air picks up moisture
over the Gulf of Mexico, and when it blows towards us
and hits our mountains, it rises and cools.
Cool air can't hold as much moisture, so we get rain.
Some times of the year....like
in August...we get lots and lots of rain.
But even though we sometimes feel we have too much water,
we're careful not to waste it.
When Mom finishes the laundry or dishes, she uses the left
over water to clean our patio.
Our village is surrounded by fields of coffee trees,
and most men here pick coffee for a living.
The small coffee trees are usually grown
in the shade under taller trees.
Inside each coffee berry are the seeds, which we call beans,
and that's the part that's sold.
Our neighbors are selling the coffee beans they picked today
to a buyer just down the street from us.
The buyer pays them according to the weight
of the coffee they've picked.
This buyer will sell the beans to a company that roasts
and packages the coffee for sale.
Some towns have several places that roast coffee,
and the neighborhoods around them smell wonderful!
After school I change clothes.
Then we go to a nearby town to a big market
for the Candelaria's festival,
the day when baby Jesus was presented to the Church.
After we walk through the market we stop at the church
where Mom asks the Blessed *** to bless and protect us.
When we get home from the festival we have an
early dinner.
My cousins Antonia and Sinai live in a town nearby
and they're visiting for the day.
We take a walk down to the coffee plantation
or hacienda near the school.
Our whole village is built on land that used
to be part of the hacienda.
It's still here, but it's smaller now.
The hacienda has its own family chapel.
When we get home, we play picture bingo.
If you have a picture that matches the card that's drawn,
you put a bean to mark that picture.
Whoever matches all the pictures in a row wins the game.
Sinai and I like to play with our computer games.
They can speak three languages!
Mom buys us a few tamales that are a little different
from the kind she makes.
That will hold us for awhile.
Lots of people in Mexico like football,
which some people call soccer.
Ingrid doesn't mind chasing balls; she even likes to chase
after an old soda bottle!
I like to spin around and then try to walk in a straight line.
The whole family is having supper with Grandma
and Grandpa tonight so this is a busy place.
Grandma is fixing tortillas for supper.
She's patting dough made from cornmeal and a little water
into flat circles that she fries.
These gorditas are made with beans
and cheese or tomato and cheese.
Kids get to eat first, so we can start to get ready for bed.
While we eat, Ingrid and our cousins are having a good time
in the living room.
After I finish eating and come back home, Mom heats some water
on the stove and adds a little cold water
to get the temperature just right to wash my hair.
I brush my teeth again before I to go to bed.
And then I say goodnight to Grandma.
I say my prayers and it's lights out.
Good night!
This is Jalapa, the city where I live.
It's the capital of the state of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico.
I live here with my Mom and Dad, my younger sister Carolina,
Eloise, who helps with the housework, and our dog, Megara.
My name is Maurice and I'm 12 years old.
It's 6:30 on Monday morning
and I'm getting ready to go to school.
Mom fixes breakfast for all of us.
I'm having yogurt and cereal.
I like to watch cartoons while I'm eating,
but Dad likes the news.
He'll drop me off at school on his way to work.
I go to a private school, and that means Mom and Dad have
to pay for me to go there.
Carolina is 5 so she goes
to a private kindergarten right next door
to my elementary school.
Mom will drop her off later this morning.
On Mondays every school
in Mexico has a flag ceremony to honor our country.
We sing our school song, the state song,
and the national anthem.
Each week one grade is responsible
for putting on a program.
This time a class of first graders acts out a story
where hunters come to the forest, but when they see
that the animals they were going to kill have feelings
and love life like we do, they decide not to harm them,
and everyone celebrates by dancing together.
This is a good time for parents to come to school to watch
and to photograph their kids.
Our school has about 250 students in grades one
through six, and my 6th grade class has 24 students.
Our first class is English, which is one
of my favorite subjects.
I even take English lessons twice a week after school.
Today we're going to have a competition to see
which team is best at remembering how
to spell the list of words we had
for our last homework assignment.
After English we have computer class.
We learn to use the computer to review or do research
on what we're studying in our other classes.
When our teacher gives us an assignment,
we put up the green cone when we finish.
We put up the red cone if we have any questions or need help.
At 11 o'clock we have a half hour break.
Today I brought some cookies for a snack.
Sometimes I buy something from the school store.
During our break we like to play games or sometimes just talk.
Carolina's in class, too.
They've just come in from recess
and she's leading them in a song.
[Singing]
While I'm at school Mom is
at a neighborhood farmers' market buying fresh fruit
and vegetables.
All these kinds of cheese are made by a village near Jalapa.
Mom says this area grows more fruit, vegetables and coffee
than any other state in Mexico.
One reason is that we get more rain
than most other places in the country.
One of the things Mom likes here is that many
of the sellers give samples of whatever they're selling.
Even though Jalapa is pretty large, Mom sometimes bumps
into friends when she's shopping.
Dad's working, too.
The company he works for has more than 100 stores all
over Mexico that sell almost anything you might want to buy.
Dad says each store is really two stores, the store you see,
where salespeople wait on customers, and the store
that you don't see, where people like Dad work
to be sure everything runs smoothly.
Dad is an auditor, which means he keeps track of the money
that the store takes in and the money it pays
out to the companies that supply what the store sells.
After school it's time for my karate lesson,
which I have three times a week.
Today after we do warm up exercises,
we spar with each other.
That means we practice karate movements we're learning
until our body knows them
so well we can do them without thinking.
After my lesson we look at some pictures of the karate school
that were taken when we were all together.
After mom pays for my lesson, we head home.
Before I go to bed I usually do homework for about a half hour.
Tonight I'm working on an English assignment.
We're learning medical terms like chills,
headache, infection and cough.
I'm drawing a little picture next to each word
to help me remember what it means.
I know about coughs because I have one, and tomorrow I have
to go to the doctor to have her check it.
See you later!
It's Saturday morning, and we don't have school,
but it's going to be a busy day.
I have doctor's and dentist's appointments, and Mom
and Dad usually do something special
with Carolina and me on Saturday.
This afternoon Dad is going to take us
to the park to ride our bikes.
Then we're all going to a restaurant to eat.
But before anything else, I want to play
with my electric car for a few minutes.
I'm into cars...
I've even invented a special car lock
where you use your fingerprint
to unlock the door and start the car.
Well, time to give Megara her bath.
This spray-on shampoo doesn't use any water.
All I have to do is rub it into her coat,
and when I'm done just wipe it off with a damp towel.
She doesn't seem to mind.
While I'm working on Megara,
Mom and Eloise are doing the laundry.
At noon every Saturday Eloise catches a bus
to visit her mother in her home village about two hours away.
She'll come back on Monday.
When the laundry's done, Mom and Carolina take me to my dentist.
I have braces on my teeth,
and every month the dentist tightens my braces
so my teeth move a little bit at a time,
until they're finally straight.
I get to play monster for a few minutes.
This looks goofy, but it doesn't really hurt.
My teeth will be sore for a couple of days though.
Carolina likes the 'giant tooth' chairs in the waiting room.
My doctor's office is in a neighborhood
with lots of colorful houses.
A lot of people in Mexico like to paint their houses
and buildings in bright colors.
When you look down some streets it's like looking
at an artist's painting.
Anyway, here's my doctor checking out my cough.
I think little kids like her stethoscope,
because it looks like a lizard.
After she listens to my heart and breathing and checks
out my ears, nose and throat, she gives Mom a prescription
for medicine she thinks I should take.
We get the prescription filled and Mom pays for it.
Now it's time to have some fun!
Before Dad takes us to the park, Carolina and I check the air
in our bicycle tires to be sure they're not too soft.
We use this hand pump to put more air
in the ones that need it.
Loading our bikes is like putting together a puzzle.
The park is just a few minutes from our house.
It's nice and level and we don't have to watch out for traffic.
This family is finding little clams in the stream
that flows through the park.
We like the stream because you can see some really neat things.
Dad found some tadpoles.
At first they're hard to see
because they don't move around much.
As they grow the tadpoles will lose their tails
and turn into frogs.
Time for our taco dinner.
Mom opens the medicine we picked up
and finds something we've never seen before.
The medicine is inside a straw so it will mix
with whatever I'm drinking.
Cool!
After we finish dinner it's time to head home for a rest.
Tomorrow is Sunday and we'll go to church.
See you then!
It's Sunday morning and we're going to Mass.
Most people in Mexico are Catholics.
Some of us help collect donations for the church.
Then everyone shakes hands with the people around them
and we wish each other peace.
At the end of the service,
people line up to receive communion.
After church we'll go home and rest until later
in the afternoon, when one
of Carolina's friends is having a birthday party.
Our whole family's invited.
It's four o'clock....time for Paloma's birthday party.
Some families rent a place like this for their parties
so parents can sit at tables while us kids play.
We have lots to do here even if it's raining,
because there's a whole indoor playground.
Some kids like to use the stage to pretend they're putting
on a show for the audience.
But the biggest event at the party is breaking the pinata,
which is filled with candy.
The trick is to break it open so the candy or prizes will spill
out and the kids can pick them up.
It's not as easy as it sounds, because the pinata is attached
to a rope to move it up and down.
If older or stronger kids look
like they'll break it open right away,
the man with the rope pulls the pinata
up to make it harder to hit.
For the smaller kids the operator just lets the kids
whack away.
This way the pinata lasts longer
and everybody gets a chance to try their luck.
During each person's turn we sing a song that encourages them
to break the pinata before we finish the song.
Finally the pinata is torn open enough
for the candy to spill out.
Today we have two pinatas, so if you didn't get tired enough
with the first one, you can start all
over again on this one!
Dad has to leave the party to catch a plane
to Mexico for his work.
I bet you're thinking....'How can he go to Mexico
when we're already in Mexico??'
Well, when someone here says they're going to Mexico,
they mean they're going to Mexico City,
which is the capital of our country.
Dad has to go there for business every two weeks
for a couple of days.
The birthday cake is ready and it's time
for Paloma to make a wish.
This is messy, but it's fun.
When we get home I have a bedtime snack,
then I play for a little while.
But I have to be in bed by 9 because I have school tomorrow.
After I brush my teeth, I say my prayers.
And say goodnight to Mom.
Then it's lights out.
Goodnight!