Jovani Maldonado was a 10th grader at Latitude High School in Oakland, he was killed in an automobile accident last weekend. His family is trying to raise money for his burial, please help if you can, this is his story. I am so sorry I did not publish it when he could have seen it.
I feel joyful when I am going to Mexico. I have more fun in Mexico than when I’m in Oakland. I will never forget the time I landed in Mexico. It
was a time that I will never forget and trust me, that feeling right when you land has to be the best feeling ever, feels like you’re in a whole different world. I just wanted to go outside and see how it is and visit places and go see the local people and see the local animals, living in freedom and peace. I just wanted to experience all of Mexico.
I still remember when I visited Teotihuacan and we had to rent a van because I had a lot of my family members going. When we got to Tizayuca we first went to the pyramids, but we had to pay for parking of course.
After getting out of the car after a long car ride, we started to explore. I noticed the people selling little wooden animals and just seeing the crafts of the people filled me up with joy. My whole experience at Teotihuacan was incredible. I felt like I was in a whole different world. The food there is different, but so good and so much better. The area is so beautiful and exciting to go to. I would personally love to go back and experience more of
Teotihuacan.
Most people think that Mexico is a bad place, but really it’s a country where a lot of people visit and it has very spectacular places. Mexico is filled with
history. That’s why it brings a lot of people to come and experience.
According to the Tourism Board’s latest numbers, a record-breaking 10.6 million tourists visited the destination in the first quarter of 2018, up 12.6
percent over the 9.4 million visitors seen during the same period last year (Travel Agent Central 1).
Mexico isn’t all that dangerous. According to the U.S. Government, millions of U.S. citizens safely visit Mexico each year and about one million Americans live there. Like them, travelers can greatly enhance their safety by using some common sense while traveling in Mexico (Never Stop Traveling 1). Between 2016 and 2017, the Mexican immigrant population shrunk by about 300,000, from 11.6 million to 11.3 million (MPI 1).
I will never forget the image of all the people surrounding the pyramids, looking at their beauty. That brings me to something that I will never forget
about Mexico and that is that there is so much more freedom there than the U.S. In Oakland, where I live when I’m not visiting Mexico, I don’t have as much freedom. The reason why I like Mexico more than Oakland is because in Oakland there is mostly not many cool places to visit and in Mexico there are cool places all over the city. Mexico is very small and everybody knows everybody, and because of that they have such nice communication with one another. In the morning, when people go out, everyone greets one another. The other difference is that in Oakland there are not that many safe places you can go and you can’t even go out for a walk.
In Oakland, you never know if someone is going to do something to you or if you do something, you never know if the police will stop you. In Mexico, it’s different because the police are more relaxed.
I miss Mexico because of the freedom, but I know there there is not much support and too much poverty there. My life in Oakland is different because there’s a lot of support here in school. So, for that reason, I’m okay right where I am.
Works Cited
Richards, Spike, et al. “The Top 10 Places in Mexico You Need to See to Fully Experience and Enjoy the Country.” Never Stop Traveling, 13 Mar. 2019,
www.neverstoptraveling.com/the-top-10-places-inmexico.
Zong, Jie, et al. “Mexican Immigrants in the United States.” Migrationpolicy.org, 31 Oct. 2018,
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/mexicanimmigrants-
united-states Leposa, Adam. “Stats: Record 10.6 Million Tourists
Visited Mexico in Q1 2018.” Travel Agent Central, 15 May 2018, https://www.travelagentcentral.com/
running-your-business/stats-record-10-6-milliontourists-
visited-mexico-q1-2018