WEBVTT

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But I have two
wings, two cultures.

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I don't just write about Cuba.

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I've started writing about
some other topics, too.

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My newest verse
novel is actually

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about the Caribbean
Islanders including

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Cubans who were taken to Panama
to dig the canal exactly 100

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years ago.

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And then I've written
about scientists

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and search and rescue dogs.

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At home in
California, my husband

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is a volunteer search
and rescue dog handler.

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Our dogs at home
have been trained

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to go out and find people
who get lost when they're

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hiking in the mountains.

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So my job in helping
to train the dogs

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is I hide out in the
woods so that they can

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practice finding a lost person.

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I also have a new folk
tale about a little rabbit

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who wants to be big-- for
much younger children.

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But this is our-- these are
our two search and rescue dogs.

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The gray one is a mixed breed.

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She's actually very old and
retired from working now.

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She just helps train the younger
one, who was chosen as a puppy

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because he's so playful.

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The thing that makes a
good search and rescue dog

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is playfulness.

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The thing that makes a good
working dog of any sort

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is playfulness.

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Dogs don't see any difference
between work and play,

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so it's as if when you
find out you have homework,

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you just get so excited.

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I get to do my homework.

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This is going to be so much fun!

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That's how a dog-- that would
be the attitude of a dog

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if you gave him work to do.

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They want to have a job.

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It's exciting to them.

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The nose of a dog
is really smart,

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and if you look at the
science of the nose--

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I hope you have a chance to
read Mountain Dog at some point

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and really learn the
amazing things a dog can

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do with their nose.

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That's me hiding with our
dogs right after I was found.

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To us, it seems like
the dogs are solving

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a mystery by following invisible
scent clues, but to the dogs,

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it's a fun game of hide and
seek because they do love

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to work so much and they
think of it as play.

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The mind of a writer is a
lot like the mind of a dog.

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Work and play are the same.

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I love seeing a finished book in
a reader's hands or on a shelf,

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but I also enjoy
the daily process

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of slowly figuring
things out, choosing

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each plot twist, each word,
each poem, each rhythm.

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Writing is incredibly
challenging, serious, difficult

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work, but it's
also glorious fun.

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I love to let my
imagination soar.

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Do you like to daydream?

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Then you could be a writer.

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That's all you need is a great
imagination and curiosity so

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that if, for instance, you
want to write about history,

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your curiosity would lead
you to do the research

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and then your daydreaming
skills would lead

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you to imagine the details.

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When we go for a walk, if we
forget to take a ball with us--

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Chance loves to
chase anything round.

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That's his thing
is chasing a ball.

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And if we forget to
take one with us,

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he picks his own off a tree.

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This is an orange.

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But coming back to the
subject of my own background,

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my Cuban mother and
American father,

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I just wanted to show you a
map first to remind ourselves

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that Cuba is one of the closest
neighbors of the United States.

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Our closest neighbors are
Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and a few

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of the other Caribbean islands.

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So many of my ideas come
from childhood visits

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to my mother's homeland.

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Her hometown is a very beautiful
town called Trinidad de Cuba

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on the South Central Coast.

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And it's actually a
World Heritage site

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with the colonial
architecture preserved

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by the United Nations, so it's
kept in very good conditions.

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During the school year
when I was a child,

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I was quiet and shy,
a bookworm, timid,

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what you would call
a nerd these days.

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I was from the big, crowded
city of Los Angeles,

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but summers in Cuba meant
friendly family gatherings

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in the small town and on farms.

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It meant listening
to my grandmother's

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and great grandmother's
stories, and those summers

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gave me the chance to spend
time outdoors with older cousins

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exploring tropical nature.

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And exploring these
mysteries of history

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like this old bell tower
on an abandoned sugar mill.

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There are lots of stories
about why this tower is there.

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Some say it was a lookout
to capture runaway slaves.

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Others say it was a
lookout to see if pirates

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were going to attack the coast.

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Some say there were
two brothers and one

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dug a well and the other
got jealous and built

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a tower the same height
as the well was deep.

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And some say it was
a jealous husband who

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locked his wife in the tower.

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So when you're
studying history, you

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have all these choices
of what to believe.

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I look at this tower and I
choose which of those stories.

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I think-- I like--

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personally, I like
the two brothers

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because that well
is a magic well.

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That's how the story goes.

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This is the town
plaza in Trinidad,

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and my parents met
on the terrace of one

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of these colonial palaces.

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It's actually the
terrace from which

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this photograph was taken.

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They met because my
father, who is an artist,

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was looking at National
Geographic magazines,

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and he saw pictures of this
town, pictures very similar

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to this.

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And he said, oh,
that's so beautiful.

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I want to go there and paint.

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So he went to Cuba
to paint this town.

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He arrived in my mother's
hometown on Valentine's Day,

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and they met that first
day on this terrace.

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The palace at that time was
being used as an art school.

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Today this same palace is
called el Museo Romántico,

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the Romantic Museum, and it's
actually named from romantic

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era art that's displayed there.

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But I choose to believe that
it's because my parents met

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there on Valentine's
Day because what could

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be more romantic than that.

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Especially since they didn't
speak the same language.

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My father only knew English,
and my mother only knew Spanish.

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But they were artists, so they
passed pictures back and forth

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to get to know each other.

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And soon they were
married, and they

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moved to my father's hometown.

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But I always
wondered what my life

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would have been like if we'd
stayed in my mother's hometown.

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And I always felt like both
worlds were available to me

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when we traveled on
those summer trips.

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Then tragedy struck in my life.

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Have members of your family
ever been mad at each other?

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Have they been mad at each
other for more than 50 years?

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Well, this was a strange,
frightening thing

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in my childhood.

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There was almost a
war, not quite a war,

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but just enough anger to
make the leaders of the two

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countries I love stop
talking to each other

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and stop allowing people
to travel back and forth.

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And that was more
than 50 years ago.

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No shots were fired, but after
the missile crisis of 1962,

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our summer visits to Cuba ended.

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And even communication
became very difficult.

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Receiving letters or phone
calls was extremely rare.

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So we lost contact
with my grandmother

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and great grandmother,
aunts, uncles, cousins.

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During the years when
I was a teenager,

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it was easier for an American
citizen to walk on the moon

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than to visit relatives in Cuba.

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Pretty hard to
believe, isn't it,

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that the two
countries would still

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stay mad at each other
all the way until now?

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Thankfully, I have had many
chances to return as an adult.

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There are some exemptions
to the travel restrictions,

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but more than 50 years
after that missile crisis,

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my mother's country
and my father's country

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still have not renewed
diplomatic relations.

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So the two halves of
my family are still

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separated by
politicians' decisions.

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Nevertheless, I
write about hope.

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Remember all my books, there's
always a message of hope,

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and I do remain hopeful
that someday these two

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countries that are
such close neighbors

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will once again be friends.

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This is a typical street
in Trinidad de Cuba.

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The streets are cobblestone
instead of paved

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because they were built
hundreds of years ago

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and nothing has changed.

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They preserved the architecture
just the way it was.

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These windows, the tall windows
with those bars on them,

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are one of the two ways that
girls could flirt with boys.

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During my mother's youth at the
time when my father met her,

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girls could only go
out with a chaperone.

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So, for instance, on
Sunday evening, the girls

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would walk one direction
around that central plaza--

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the picture with the palaces--

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and boys would walk
the other direction,

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and they'd check each other out.

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But the girls had
an older relative

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with them dressed in
black and frowning,

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so they weren't easy to talk to.

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The other way was
through these windows.

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A girl could be
inside the window,

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and boy could be out on the
street and they could talk.

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But I guarantee you, the
older relative dressed

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in black and frowning was
inside that room with the girl,

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so it was still supervised.

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