WEBVTT

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The tropical nature of the
beautiful green, very wet,

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rainy surroundings that were
so different than my big city

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surroundings were what really
captivated me as a child.

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I loved nature.

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The first time I went
back to Cuba as an adult

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and I made contact
with my cousins

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and visited the people I hadn't
seen since childhood, one

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of them opened the door, took
one look at me, and said,

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I remember you.

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You're the one who
played with tarantulas.

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Because I was that
kind of a kid,

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I was the kid that didn't mind
getting dirty, running around

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out in the mud, looking at
bugs, and playing with plants.

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And I ended up
being a scientist.

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I studied botany and agriculture
because of my fascination

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with tropical nature.

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These are my parents
when they first met.

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And that's the youngest picture
of me that I have from Cuba.

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I think I was probably about two
on one of our earliest summer

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visits.

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And you can see the
cattle in the background.

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The family farm
was a dairy farm.

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But the cattle weren't kept
cooped up like they are here.

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They were wild,
so my cousins got

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to around them up every evening
and bring them into a corral

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so that they could be
milked the next morning.

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And to me, that was the ultimate
thing I was looking forward to,

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was being old enough to someday
participate in the roundup.

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This farm was actually
bought with pirate's gold

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because one of my
ancestors was a pirate.

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My cousins could do rope tricks.

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And as you can see, I
wasn't a very good rider.

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But I loved horses.

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I still love horses.

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And I just loved
the idea of riding.

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And I had read the
Black Stallion book,

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so I thought I knew how to
ride because I thought you

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could learn anything in a book.

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The truth is, it takes practice.

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That's my great grandmother
with her favorite donkey

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and my grandmother
with a dove on her head

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that just happened to
land there that day.

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This is a big family group
from earlier from when

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my mother was a child.

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She's the one with the
big bow in her hair.

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And my grandmother,
great grandmother

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are also in this
picture, and lots

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of my mother's first cousins
and aunts and uncles.

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When I go to Cuba, I always
look at the antique book

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fairs and antique
bookstores because

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for the historical research
like the surrender tree,

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believe it or not, everything is
not available on the internet.

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A lot of these older books
have not yet been digitized.

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And I do need the actual,
physical antique book in order

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to read what's in it.

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And the things I look
for in that research are,

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in particular, what
I love the most,

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is to find something written by
a person who lived at that time

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and experience those things.

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Now, Rosa La Bayamesa
did not leave a diary.

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We don't know of any
written work by her.

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Other people wrote about her.

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But for many of my
other books, there

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have been diaries and
letters written by the people

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that I want to know about.

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And that's where I find--

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what do you think
you find in a diary?

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You find how people felt.
You find their emotions.

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You also find out what
they had for breakfast

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and the daily routines that
aren't available in the more

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traditional history books that
just deal with the big events.

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I like to know about
those small daily events.

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This is a typical mailbox in
the colonial parts of Cuba

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that you put your letter
through that monster's mouth.

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And these are some of the very
young cousins and my cousin's

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children in Trinidad.

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You can see the church
bell tower behind them and.

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They're sitting on a dog,
right, a statue of a dog.

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But they call it a
caballito, a horse.

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And my mother called it a
horse when she was little.

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And every generation of
children who sit on that dog

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call it a horse.

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And that just shows the power
of imagination in storytelling,

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that if you want to believe
that dog is a horse,

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you are free to believe that.

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You can choose.

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Music is such an important
part of Cuban culture.

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Everywhere you go, there
are always street musicians.

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I found this little dog hiding
in a store that was all drums.

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And one of my books
coming out next year

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is about a 10-year-old
girl who was

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the first female drummer in
Cuba, less than 100 years ago,

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in the 1930s.

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Can you believe that until the
1930s, on this island where

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music is so important
and so popular,

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they thought only men
should play drums?

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Girls, how does
that make you feel?

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It's kind of amazing, isn't it?

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And then reverse it,
boys, how would you

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feel if you were the ones
not allowed to play drums?

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So that book, it's
a picture book.

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It's really gorgeous
illustrations.

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And it's called Drum Dream Girl.

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Some of my other
works in progress--

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now, this monkey
hanging from the boat,

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he actually came onto our boat
while I was in Panama doing

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the research for silver
people, my new book

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about the Panama Canal.

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And he was begging
for food on the boat.

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But the orangutans, I visited
recently a couple of years

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ago a refuge in Borneo, which
you'll have to look at a map

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when you get back to class.

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Borneo is close to China.

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I visited a refuge
where orangutans

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were being rescued as the
rainforest was cut down

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to plant palm oils, which
goes into all your junk food.

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Palm oil is an
ingredient of junk food.

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And as the rainforest
is cut down,

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the orangutans would die
if they weren't rescued.

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So they were being rescued and
returned into rainforest homes

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where they can survive.

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And I've written a book
about the orangutans.

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So as you can see, I
really love to explore.

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I love to experiment.

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I love to try lots of different
kinds of writing and lots

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of different topics.

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It's pretty amazing to
see orangutans up close.

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And when you travel,
when you explore,

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you just never know
who you'll meet.

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This sea turtle, when
I held this sea turtle,

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I learned that if you face
the water while you're holding

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a sea turtle, it will paddle.

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But if you turn your
back to the ocean,

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it stops because,
instinctively, it

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knows that it can't swim
unless it's facing the ocean.

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So again, just
traveling and learning

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is always so fascinating.

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Cuba is one of our
closest neighbors.

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The people are very friendly.

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And I hope that you will have
a chance to meet them someday.

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I hope that you will not
have the travel restrictions

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that we've had up until now.

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I'd like to just talk
a little bit about how

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I studied writing.

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Remember I said I became
a botanist and agronomist?

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I studied agriculture in botany.

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I was a scientist.

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I did a lot of
scientific writing.

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But I also still
love to write poetry

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because I had done
that since childhood

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and I wanted to do both.

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Well, I studied creative
writing with Tomas Rivera.

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Have you read anything by
Tomas Rivera in your classes?

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He was one of the great
Mexican-American poets

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and novelists.

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And he was also the
first Latino leader

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of a University of
California campus,

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so he was a great educator.

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And he encouraged me to
write from the heart,

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exploring things that
are important to me

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without worrying about whether
anyone else likes my words.

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Not worrying is the greatest
challenge for a writer.

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Don't expect perfection,
just let the words flow.

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You can always go back and
make corrections later.

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Teachers, forgive
me, but if you're

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writing poetry, grammar and
punctuation and spelling

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can be done later.

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It doesn't have to be
in the first draft.

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The first draft is
your heart on paper,

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and that has to flow you.

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You can't constantly
interrupt it with details.

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You need to practice
if you want to write.

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Musicians and dancers rehearse.

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Athletes train.

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Writers also need practice.

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Would any of you go
out on a soccer field

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without ever having practiced?

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Would your coach let you?

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Yeah?

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Would you play in an orchestra
without ever rehearsing?

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I don't think so.

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It's the same for a writer.

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So you don't want
to get discouraged

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when your poem, you don't
think it's good enough.

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Don't let it discourage
you because it's not

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your final work.

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You have years ahead
of you to practice.

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And each failure or what
feels like a failure

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is a chance to start over.

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Our stories are all different.

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But we also have certain
things in common.

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And when we tell
our stories and we

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listen to those told by
others, we fly back and forth

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between minds.

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Reading about other
lives helps us

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begin to understand each other,
turning neighbors into friends.

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So thank you and
gracious and greetings

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from your neighbors in
Cuba who hopefully you

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will meet someday.

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I'd be really happy to
answer any questions

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that your teachers
might have in mind

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and to take a closer
look at those costumes.

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[APPLAUSE]

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