Pazmino

=__Monica Pazmino__=

Podcast
media type="custom" key="12457594"

BIOGRAPHICAL/GEOGRAPHICAL NOTE
====My Interviewee or immigrant, Monica Pazmino, was a music teacher in Quito, Ecuador about 11 or 12 years ago. She moved to America in 1999 with her husband and two sons Alberta and Philippe. She and her husband thought that it would be best to immerse her children in a different culture. Her family has grown accustomed to the United States, because originally, the all planned on staying for only 2 years rather than 11.==== ====Ecuador is a South American country boarded by Peru and Columbia and the Pacific Ocean. The capital of the country is Quito. Ecuador has about 15,007,343 people and about 95% of them are Roman Catholic. The full name of Ecuador is the Republic of Ecuador and its official language is Spanish.====

**Creative Writing**


 * Essence of Ecuador **

Piles of fruits, Colorful, sweet, fragrant. Crowded markets, Almost no room to move, But still, I love this place all in all as my home.

The city, colorful, bright. Can only be described as beautiful, Overwhelming, Flavorful.

Surrounded by family, By my friends. Laughter with Love.

A land founded by foreigners, Leaders writing, Writing, Writing, And re-writing the law, Our law, Constitution. Unstable.

A jewel in a dirt fog, A fog encased by the Walls of the land.

High above the town, A people itself on it, Riches are in it, A culture surrounds it, Admirers below it.

This is my family, My home, My country, My Andes.

**Tyson Reed**

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
TYSON: Okay

MRS. PAZMINO: You’re making me nervous with this, I’m just kidding k.

TYSON: Miss Pazmino, Right?

MRS. PAZMINO: You can call me Monica please.

TYSON: Monica, Can you introduce yourself, like state you full name and where and when you immigrated.

MRS. PAZMINO: I am Monica Pazmino; do I need to tell you my age?

Both: No

MRS. PAZMINO: Okay, that is a good thing, we moved with my husband, and our boat, and our kids to the states in 1999, our original plans were to stay here for about 2 years, so far it has been 11 years and we are still here, so that means that we like the place I guess.

TYSON: What job did you have in your old country?

MRS. PAZMINO: I was a music teacher, I had my own business, I had a partner and we had a small music academy for children so I used to teach piano in a Montessori. [Indistinct]

TYSON: What attracted you to America, what prompted you to move?

MRS. PAZMINO: Our original plans were to expose our children to a different culture, moving here for a while; it was a good idea for them to see and find another place, experience another culture and other persons that was basically our objective. We were lucky that my husband’s company was able to send us here; it was pretty much by accident. It’s not that we had to move out of the country, we both worked, all our family is still there, and we still have our house we never planned to stay here that long.

TYSON: Where did you immigrate from?

MRS. PAZMINO: My country of origin is Ecuador, it’s in South America. Ecuador is a country that is about the size of the state of Nevada. There are about 15 million people living in my little country and we are located just on the equatorial line and that’s how Ecuador got its name, actually. And we are today our northern border is Columbia, our southern border is Peru, they surround us, and to the west we have the Pacific Ocean.

TYSON: how was life like in Ecuador?

MRS. PAZMINO: life in Ecuador was nice, it was not as friendly as life is here, and we were more family oriented. Family’s a big thing, we have lots of family gatherings and there’s a flock of people coming. Quito, which is the capital we used to live, is now probably 1 million people living there, so it’s a crowded city but still we manage to have weekends and do things, just life is no different. We had, I mean the day to day life is no different, I mean you go to your job, you [indistinct] cars, bring your kids to school you pick them up and the whole thing. There are very minor differences, we watch television, we do the whole thing yeah. Most the difference is only how family life is around family life. And I mean by family, not just the family, the basic family but the extended family yeah so that’s the consequent family.

TYSON: Can you tell me about your family?

MRS. PAZMINO: my family or my extended family? Well my family is 4 people, my husband, me, and 2 kids. We have 2 boys, Alberta and Philippe, they are 27 and 25 right now, and we moved to the States when they were 13 and 15 so for the most part, half of their lives they have spent in the United States, that’s my little family. My extended family’s another different story. my husband has 8 brothers and sisters in his family and mine we are 5, so there’s as you can imagine that our family gatherings start at maybe 30 people, that’s my family, we spend a lot of time together on the weekends. We are 4 sisters and a brother and we all have about the kids that are around the same ages. They are raised from one year apart, and there are 13 grandchildren from my mom, and of those the first nine are only 1 year apart, so it was a really close-knit family.

TYSON: Do you have any hobbies?

MRS. PAZMINO: I do. I love movies, I love music, I love the opera, I love the theater, I love going to museums, I love art. I love crocheting, but I don’t have time to do that.

TYSON: You said you like music and movies. What genre music do you like?

MRS. PAZMINO: I was trained in classical music, so I really like it, but I do like American music I do like [indistinct] and Latin American music.

TYSON: Okay, how was education, school?

MRS. PAZMINO: Education, well the education is, as I can see from my kids is pretty much the same, what works is a little different, when you come to the states; the kids go to the class. Back at home and in other Latin American countries it works different, the teacher goes to the class, that allows for your classmates to be with you 12 years of school so I had my best friends, there are 4 of us, we were classmates we started in 1st grade and we did all of our 12, 20 years in the same class, so that, that’s a good thing and a bad thing. I think it’s good in the sense you really create really very strong ties with your friends, but the other like a place you have to stay with them. For college it’s pretty much the same, probably in the last 5 years is that they have started collage life like they have in the States, where you have to go to the campus you have to stay there, to live there, it doesn’t happen at home. I went to college at home [Ecuador], over my 4 years at college I stayed home with my parents and you just go to school, there’s no such thing as dorms or college life. That idea is not even there, they are just recently starting to do that. I have some nephews and nieces that are in college right now back at home and they live with their parents.

TYSON: Can you tell me about your friends, because you seem like a really friendly person?

MRS. PAZMINO: I just love my friends, I probably have 4 to 5 years of friendship if not longer, and at that point, you really love your friends they are just like your family. I was lucky enough that all my friends [indistinct] we married pretty much at the same time, so our kids are all around the same age, and the funny thing is that our kids are all good friends, and that’s my friends from home. I do have friends here; they are very nice people that I have met. I really, I really like being here, made really great friendships.

TYSON: Do you still keep in contact with some of them?

MRS. PAZMINO: My 4 buddies from home? Oh yeah! Yeah every time I go there we really have fun, we get together and try to stay as much as closer as possible.

TYSON: What was the government like in your country?

MRS. PAZMINO: In my country, it’s a democracy, a messy democracy, we don’t have stability. I think that since Ecuador started as a Spanish colony, it was part of what we called the peace heroic of Perdu, it was part of that land. Before that, what is now Ecuador was conquered now by the Incas, we have lots in common from people from Peru and Columbia because all of that were the former Inca Empire, but then in 1824 we started as a country under the name of Ecuador, and that is now Quito, the province of Quito, all of that that was from the peace heroic is now Ecuador. That time we had many presidents, who rewritten and rewritten and rewritten our constitution. Has been a very unstable country, as a democracy we had group [indistinct]. In the last 10 years, I think we have, we’re getting better, having a democracy and elections.

TYSON: What’s the common language spoken?

MRS. PAZMINO: Spanish.

TYSON: Like, any other languages?

MRS. PAZMINO: There are some other languages, especially in the rural communities, from this, to the communities in the Andes, they all speak Quechua, Quechua language, and the Quechua they are actually bilingual. What the government is trying to do is to set up bilingual schools because that language is disappearing and now they’re trying to bring that up because tradition is a part of our culture, our language.

TYSON: Did your country have any traditional dress or clothing, or is it basically similar America?

MRS. PAZMINO: For business you have like my husband, he has to use the tie all the time. But that’s changing a lot, as for traditional, except for the ones we were looking at, in some communities people just dress normal with some variations.

TYSON: Seeing as like Ecuador’s like, the longitude and latititude of almost 0, and altitude of 0, can you explain what the climate and weather is?

MRS. PAZMINO: The climate is, we’ll start with, we only 2 seasons, the rainy and the less rainy, and that is pretty much it. Quito is about between the 50’s and 70’s all year round. Because it is on the Andes, Quito is a very high place. I think it’s about 10,000 feet, don’t quote me on that because I have a problem reading meters, the metric system and the American system, it’s very high up in the mountains. So for that reason, it’s dry, for that reason also it’s about 60’s, 70’s. So there’s no snow except for the mountains, it’s not too hot either; we don’t have heat in the 90’s or something like that. But if you go in the coastal region, you will have all year long, that region for the most part like the Caribbean, so you are going to have hot all day. In the Galapagos islands is the same thing, the Galapagos Islands are part of Ecuador, and on the Amazon rain forest It was rain and rain and rain, it rained 24/7, it’s so humid you can like feel the heaviness of that. “Daytonians” complain about humidity, that’s the place to start, go there and you will stop complaining about it.

TYSON: What do you remember most about Ecuador, about Quito?

MRS. PAZMINO: About Quito? What I remember the most, the old town. I love to go there all of the time, I mean my college years, after class we used to go there, and I miss that. Quito is also a very polluted city, traffic is just horrible, I mean horrible because it’s sealed in with the range of mountains. You don’t have any, room for streets or wide roads so that’s, most of the traffic is when people go to work and down town for the most part so it is a very crowded place.

TYSON: What U.S. products or fast food restaurants are in your country?

MRS. PAZMINO: There is a McDonalds; Applebee’s went out of business, Subway went out of business, McDonalds still there, Burger King is still there, there’s a KFC. KFC’s a funny thing, because they tried to adapt to the local culture. I think that the KFC back at home is much better than the one KFC in the States.

TYSON: What was the immigration process like overall?

MRS. PAZMINO: Oh My God, yeah that’s a tough question, my husband was sponsored by the company to work here, my husband got what they call an L1 visa, that type of visa allows you to work only in the place that sponsors your visa, but since we were with him, we got these L2 visas. And on those you cannot work and my children and I had those in too, we were here because we were attached to his visa but we could not work. After 6 years because of all the paperwork it took us longer than expected and finally in 2005 we got our green cards, our residence visa so after that I was allowed to work and I started working, yep. And now we are starting the process to becoming a citizen and how it works is that you have to keep your resident status for 5 years, after those 5 years you can start applying for citizenship. Yeah we were able to do that in 2010.

TYSON: So, like how did you come here like plane, boat, train?

MRS. PAZMINO: How did we come? Plane, probably because of connections it usually takes a whole day to get there. It’s not that long the distance but because of the connections that makes it longer. Usually from Miami, Florida would take about 4 hours to fly to Quito.

TYSON: If you could change the process how would you change it?

MRS. PAZMINO: What process?

TYSON: The Immigration process.

MRS. PAZMINO: If I could change the process, it was a pain to get those L1, L2 visas. Because we wanted to get out of the country and we had to renew this green paper every 6 months, after those permits expire you had to renew, I mean everything you had to renew. But I wouldn't change it I think people just need some time to adjust, it wouldn't be fair to get your citizenship as soon as you get here so it has to be a process.

TYSON: In my class, we studied Ellis Island and the medical examinations; did you have to go through those sorts of steps?

MRS. PAZMINO: For Immigration medical Examinations? Yeah we did have to go through that in the county health department. And it’s understandable; the government wants to make sure you have the right vaccinations and everything, that’s fine for me. So we had to go through that process so. It was not difficult; it was just painful as paperwork.

TYSON: How did it feel like walking to an office to gain citizenship?

MRS. PAZMINO: Well I will tell you as soon as I get it, but from people I have talked to, it is a bittersweet feeling sometimes. For us, it’s not that I don’t like this country, but it’s going to make our life much easier if we become citizens as far as taxes, as far as coming and going out of the country because if we keep these residential permits, we’d be stuck how we are now. One of the reasons I would like to become a citizen is that I would love to vote.

TYSON: So what was it like here in America for you?

MRS. PAZMINO: Very different. Not to different from my life back at home, it was not that different. Some things you have to adjust, some things like, the food still is an issue, we still miss a lot of food, but I really love American food. I have learned to eat American food and you have really great things like [indistinct].

TYSON: How does the weather here compare to the weather in Ecuador?

MRS. PAZMINO: The weather in Ecuador, we have 2 seasons, summer and spring. So usually the rainy season goes, as you know we have very marked regions and the climates vary from region to region. The region where I used to live which is close to the Andes Mountains, I think that we had rain from October to April and it’s most sunny from May to September. Summer is dry but not as hot, summer would be in the 80’s at the most and winter would be somewhere around the 40’s.

TYSON: What was the first thing you saw when you came here?

MRS. PAZMINO: The first time I was in the united states is when I was 17, I was an exchange student, before that I was going to Europe and I had to stay 2 days in Miami, my first impression was “why the roads are…”

TYSON: Did you know English before you came to America?

MRS. PAZMINO: Yes, I learned English when I was in 1st grade, my school put a lot of emphasis on learning English, so for the first part of my school life, I had at least 2 hours daily of English. In high school we had some subjects in English, we took English literature, I learned about Shakespeare, we also had geography that was my worst subjects, and history. I’ve had all of them in English

TYSON: Is there a scent that reminds you of Quito?

MRS. PAZMINO: A scent? Not really. There was one time, a soup that my mom used to cook but that was just one time, it was in a restaurant but I don’t know the type of soup it was, but it was for another table they were serving.

TYSON: What music do you listen to now?

MRS. PAZMINO: I listen classic, I listen opera, I listen American, from The Beetles to Lunar Coin to Radiohead to Cold Play, yeah I really like a lot of music, some Latin American music also, I like the Latin American music from the 70’s, I like some of the modern ones, like [indistinct]. They are not known in the states but most of them in Spain and Latin America, Russioli and Mussi, I love it. And Portuguese music, I love it also.

TYSON: What do you think of American Food?

MRS. PAZMINO: I like it, for the most part there is this idea that American food is without flavor and I think that is not true and I really think that hamburgers are good. There are some good and some bad, I like ribs, traditional American food like pies, and that made from scratch food is really awesome, what I don’t like is prepared food like TV dinners and things like that.

TYSON: What is different in America than in Quito?

MRS. PAZMINO: In regards to the youth groups, like the boy scouts and girl scouts, there are some groups like the rotaries, but they are not as deep or as important as they are in the United States.

TYSON: What do you think the American character is or the American dream?

MRS. PAZMINO: I really don’t agree with this belief of the American dream I think that it is for most of the people, even if they do the things people are supposed to do in order to achieve that dream it doesn’t happen for 95% of the people here, there are some other values that can be achieved not only the American dream but most people think of it as achieving monetary economic accomplishments. To me it is more about happiness, and I think that many people living with an education and money don’t accomplish the American dream.

The person I have interviewed, Mrs. Pazmino, has had an immigration experience that is in my opinion only vaguely similar to what we were studying in Social Studies. Mrs. Pazmino’s family moved to the United States for various reasons, one of those reasons being because of her husband’s job. In this case, they immigrated because of business rather than any political issues or a damaged government. Another reason Mrs. Pazmino came to America was because of her two sons, she wanted to expose and show them a different culture, now they have spent nearly half of their lives in the United States. In my class, we have mainly examined immigration from early American settlers, but through detail there are some similarities like medical examinations. I see that the immigration process has changed from what it was originally, for example, now you can keep your original last name without it being altered; although, modification may be required for the process itself.