ALEXIS: A life without iPhones, laptops, or maybe even the television. Life in the Philippines was different, and I wanted to find out more about my grandmother, Paulita, and her past. She was born on May 19, 1946 in Pampanga, Philippines. Her only job as a child was to do her chores and help her mom at a family-owned restaurant. After she graduated high school, she got married and had four children, one of them is my mother. She’s a Catholic and goes to church every
Sunday. I remember when I used to go with her to mass every Sunday, and then we would get coffee and donuts right after. The one thing I love about her is her passion to cook Filipino food. My favorite dish of hers is “beefsteak” …show more content…
She said that she was playing that game, scraped her knee, and ran to her mother crying. Her mother cleaned up her wound, and she went out to play with her friends again.
I never imagined her crying before, because she’s a really tough lady. She doesn’t stop until she gets what she wants. When I was 13 years old, I visited her house during the summer, and we would go to garage sales every Saturday or Sunday. She would bargain on many things, and if she didn’t get the price she wanted, she wouldn’t buy that certain item. I guess she reminds me of Vladek from Maus by Art Spiegelman, because he would do his best to save him money just like my grandmother.
What were some new inventions or gadgets that came out when you were a child? Did you have any of them?
PAULITA: Yeah, when I was 7 or 8 the TV was introduced. Uh, we didn’t have it because we were poor and we couldn’t afford it. We weren’t even middle class.
ALEXIS: I wasn’t that surprised to hear that she was poor, because I know that a lot of people in the Philippines struggle to live. Her family couldn’t afford any expensive things when she was a child, because they were poor and she didn’t even consider herself “middle class.” But, her mother owned a restaurant, but they only