Answers from the Students in Mexico Spring 2014
Greeting | School | Home | Monarch

Students interviewed this year come from many areas, from rural to big city.

What kind of American food do you eat?
Diego: Hamburgers, hot dogs, instant soups, and pizza.
Esmeralda: Sometimes, when I visit my aunts in the city, they take me to eat pizza, which I never have here at home. It is not part of our daily food. It is a snack, not really a formal meal.
Lía: I love having pizza as often as possible.
Estela: All over México, dinner in every family includes soup, a main dish (chicken, pork or beaf meat, fish), chiles in many ways or potatoes also in different ways, and as a last course,  beans.  Curiously in Angangueo, salads are not common. On the other hand, we have wonderful bread.  Angangueo consumes a lot of bread and hot drinks, perhaps for the cold and rainy weather most of the year.

What kind of clothes do you wear?
Estela: All of the children agreed that jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers are the most comfortable and warm clothes to wear every day, especially in the winter time.

Do you ever wear traditional clothes?
Grecia: Only children and their families of the Mazahua or Otomí indigenous regions surrounding our region, around 30-50 kilometers from us.  We only dress in these clothes for special festivities to represent our pre-hispanic cultures.  Most of us Mexicans, as we grow older value this more and more, since it reflects our roots for which bright colors, nature’s  symbols, and live music are an important part of the tradition.

What do you do for Christmas?
Luz Arelia: I love to have my whole, huge family over, sleeping on the floor. We jam the house, decorating it for the holiday.
Vladimir: Making pirotecnia at night and breaking piñatas.
Claudia: Eating lots of candies and singing to little Jesus on Chrismas night.
Marco: Organizing the Posadas for a whole week in my neighborhood with my parents who head this organization. For the Religious part itself, making the reflection about Jesus’ birth, and then the fun time with breaking the piñatas and making lots of Mexican dishes, especially Christmas candies (colación), fruits, punch, pozole, and tamales.

Do you eat pancakes?
Estela: None of the children knew the name, pancakes. I had to explain that pancakes are similar to a hotcake, made of a different type of dough, cooked in a pan and sometimes topped with fruits, bacon, or syrup.

What is life like at your house?
Lupita: We help doing very light tasks at home to help our moms. We do homework and then get the rest of the afternoon free for playing, mostly outside while Mom rests from being at home and working hard the whole day.
Zamara: I do some housework before Mom comes back from work, then do some homework. I am not as free as on the weekends when I am at my grandparent's house, since in big cities in our country it is not common to play outside your home.  It can be a little dangerous. I enjoy my life at home in the city but enjoy more being so free in Angangueo.
Diego: I do homework and play the whole afternoon with my friends outside or at their homes. We are not obligated to help with housework. That is mostly a task for Mom and my sisters.

What do you like to do when you cannot go outside?
Estela: All of the children expressed silence when asked this question, not having actually experienced extreme weather in this part of our country.  When I asked them to think about T.V. images showing other parts of the world with extreme winters or summers prevent people from playing outdoors, they exclaimed: Brrrrrrr! or Wow! They realized how fortunate we are to have mild-to-wonderful weather the whole year.

What games do you play? What are your favorites?
Zamara, Lía, Emilia, Valeria, Luz Arelia , Lupita, Vanessa: Going shopping or sightseeing, learning about make-up and different hair do’s, sitting at the computer looking for news about our favorite music and T.V. stars.
Esmeralda: Watching T.V. or having my best friends come over to my house to play with my dolls and kitchen toys or imagining that we are doctors or teachers.
Leonardo,  and Antonio: Playing football outside or playing video games inside.

What sports do you play?
Girls: Volleyball and basketball, but only at school.
Boys: Football and soccer, sometimes baseball. (The rest of sports they only know through T.V.)
Estela: Girls rarely practice sports outside of school. Besides being very much at home, girls like going to one of the many internet cafés we now have everywhere. 

In what city do your parents work?
Zamara and Lía: In Toluca city, for an American private company. In México City, for a Mexican-American private company.
Minerva: In town, for the local government and tidying up our home.
Diego, Valeria, Vanessa: Mom stays at home.  Dad is a local painter, a self-made artisan-artist, very well known in our town and  region.
Vladimir, Raúl, Luz Arelia, Lupita, Alejandra: Mom does not work. Dad works in town, for the mining company.
Esmeralda: Mom works hard at home and Dad grows, buys, and sells cattle, and cares after the farm.

Do you have animals to eat the grass at your house?
Esmeralda: Yes, we have hens, roosters, and turkeys all the time and rabbits sometimes.
The rest of children: No we do not. Some of our moms have birds in cages.

Do you have any unusual pets?
All:  The most unusual pets have been turtles, hamsters, and fish. Most of us have a dog or a cat at home.

How many T.V. channels do you have?
Esmeralda and Octavio (living in the countryside):  4-5, unless the family pays for a private service.
Rest of boys and girls (living in town or in the city): 50-150, depending on the private service our families pay.  Most of these channels are American programming.

Do you listen to music at home?
All: YES! (answered in chorus)
Esmeralda, Leonardo, Luz Arelia, Vanessa, Valeria, Marina, Janette, Claudia, Diego, Marco, Octavio:  YES!  We love typical Mexican Northern Music, especially Group, Banda, Sinaloense Music, a style from  the northern state of Sinaloa.  It's very much in fashion, live and noisy-dancing genre, popular in towns, villages, and some cities--not by all people and not everywhere in our country.
Emilia, Zamara, Lía: We love Cold-Play, Rihanna, and Lorde.
Zamara and Lía:  We also love Mexican Banda.
Vannessa and Valeria:  We love Justin Bieber.
Estela: Surprisingly, none of the children mentioned a single Mexican singer, since the Mexican Banda-Group-Sinaloense genre is so popular in wide parts in México nowadays, except for a big percentage on the other side, mostly youngsters and adults and regions--who stay to classical styles, both Spanish and American singers. Classical music, for example, is actually not included in our culture, except in some sectors near cultural possibilities, like in cities and for medium-to-high-level living.

What are the average summer and winter temperatures in your town?
Estela: No child knew the answer. Perhaps this could be information we are not familiar with or interested in, since weather conditions do not actually regulate our lives.
In Angangueo: 0-3-5 °C is the coldest in winter, and 22-26°C is the hottest in late April-early May exclusively.

Are you involved with preparations for Day of the Dead?
All without exception: Very active and involved.
Boys: Cleaning up and painting our relatives' graves.
Girls: Buying the flowers at the market, setting the ofrenda at home after preparing our different Mexican dishes, and going to the cemetery with the whole family to pray, sing, and be with our dead loved ones.

What is the most beautiful time of the year?
Esmeralda: Christmas time (family time), Monarchs time (tourists coming), and our religious Patron Saint Day in May with lots of relatives and visitors from surrounding villages.
The others: (except Zamara and Lía): Christmas time, Monarchs time (beautiful weather and tourists), and the 3rd of May every year in Angangueo, because so many visitors from many towns and cities come to admire this religious festivity.
Zamara and Lía (living in the city): Christmas time because of the huge shopping centers to visit. The rest of the time is always better in Angangueo!

What do you want to be when you grow up?
Esmeralda: doctor
Luz Arelia: make-up expert
Lupita: nurse
Vianney: hairdresser
Vladimir: football player
Diego: taxi driver, like my father
Leonardo: plane pilot
Marco: construction engineer
Janette: teacher
Claudia: fashion designer
Grecia: secretary
Marina: cook
Minerva: housewife
Pepe: heavy machinery mechanic
Lía: stewardess
Zamara: lawyer
Vanessa: chemist
Valeria:  professional artistic painter and drawer
Laura Emilia: French, German speaker and anything where I can apply these languages

What holidays do you celebrate and what special foods do you eat on those holidays?
All children agreed: Besides the Day of the Dead and Christmas when we cook our Mexican dishes. Every school from all levels in all of México recall and render honor events for our country with historical significance.  Mother’s Day (May 10th) is also a very significant day for all Mexican people.

What types of technology do you use?
All children: At home, only T.V. and our mobile telephones for messaging and phoning each other. It makes no sense to get a mobile with internet, since we do not have the connection or it is too expensive to get both the telephone and to pay the connection.
Lía and Zamara: We have a computer at home, mobile phone (all with internet access), Ipad, and an Iphone, but it is too expensive for our parents to pay for the service.

Which is your favorite dish?
Luz Arelia: Guacamole, tostadas de verdura, huaraches
Octavio: Pozole, enchiladas, quesadillas, chiles rellenos
Marina: Pechugas empanizadas, chicharrón con chile, corundas, bisteck asado with french fries
Esmeralda: Barbacoa, carnitas, corundas, pozole, tacos
Vladimir: Pancita, mole (all kinds of mole: read, black, green), tlacoyos, corn-gorditas filled with different preparations

Esmeralda and her little sister pose in the landscape facing the direction of the Chincua Sanctuary - behind the mountain here.

Esmeralda and her family.

A couple of Symbolic Monarchs Esmeralda has kept for years now, decorating the window of their house.

Janette and Claudia live in town of Angangueo near this beautiful sight-seeing location.

Luz Arelia, Lupita, Vianney, Vladimir and Diego also live in Angangueo. They are just outside their home.

Many families have horses, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, and sheep