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I am a Mexican citizen. I live in Mexico City. Mexico City is the biggest city in the World. It has a beautiful, colonial downtown, and I go there really often.

I love downtown. I live more or less near downtown, but I make all my life in the south. I go to University, to the movies, even bars, most of my friends' houses are in the south.

I should move to south. But I don't . I live in an apartment. I've lived at my grandpa's ever since my father was killed and my mother had to work. Before that my grandma and one of my aunts look after us, so it wasn't that difficult to move in with them.

That aunt, we used to call her "Nena", but her name was Carmen. Carmen like the opera. Se was the one whom introduced me to the world of stories. She used to read to me even before I could understand what she said. And then before I was able to read for myself, she asked me to so she could rest her eyes for a while.

And by the time I was 6 she died. It's amazing how I can remember her soft, white skin and her curly hair better than I remember my father.

It pained me to find out she died. My mom didn't tell us immediatly. She let us know about my aunt's death a month after it happened. We had gone to the fair, and then my mom took us to the church. I had been told my aunt was in the hospital. So when my mom asked what were we praying for, I -an atheist ever since- answered I was praying for my aunt to heal. So my mother started crying and told us she wasn't coming back, for she fell asleep once and never got up again.

I believe that one is the best way of dying. She was a good woman. Really good. I loved her so much. Perhaps, I think now, she is the first person I loved in my life, or at least she was the first with whom I realized what love is.

I suffered. I cried and cried. And a month after me knowing, my grandma died. She had been in the hospital. So I was familiarizes with all her troubles and didn't feel in shock when she passed away.

Still, I wish I had known her better. My mom and my grandpa say I'm like her. Not physically, they say my mood is like hers. From my father I have the face -except the nose- and some other stuff. From my aunt Nena I have the gift of stories and magic. From my granmother I have the temper.

... But I was talking about my city. Well, in morning my mother drives us to school. We drop my brother first, and then she leaves me in College.

When I get out, I take the subway. I love it. Not because it is beautiful -in fact, it is dirty and smells- but I love it because I observe people and because I come out with lots of stories. I'm even writing a compilation of subway short stories. I get to be sit all the time. When I arrive my grandpa is sit on his couch, my mother is at his room or at the computer's. My mom is at her job.

But sometimes I stay at school more hours than I should, or I go to do something with my friends, and I arrive later. Sometimes Aldo drives me home. Or I stay at Mario's.

I don't enjoy clubs as much as I enjoy bars, or pubs, or other places. I am happy play Scrabble, being home, having coffee and cigars. Hearing my friends creating songs.

I love sleeping. Love my pillows and love to go into my cold sheets and warm them with my body temperature. I love my mother's desire another skin colour. She is white -I am not, I inhereted my colour from my father-. She world like to be "darker". She looks at her milky legs and feels so disappointed. Like a little child.

I'm taller than she is, so I guess it is a fact for me to feel so tender about her. I adore my mom. I admire her so much.

She writes. She thinks a lot. I admire Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Mexican writer who was a nun and wrote wonderful love poems. Some people say she was a lesbian. I don't know. I don't care. But I admire my mom and my grandpa.

We are all humanitarian people. My mom studied communication, my grandpa's proffession is the same as Gutenberg's -you can imagine the book obssession is in my blood-, and my brother is studying history.

This has become a rather large post. I shall stop here to continue with my duties.