Exercise
You will listen to an interview between two women. Listen to Kara ask Lupe about her experience growing up in a large family. Listen and answer the comprehension questions in the exercise. The recording is at ELLLO.
Transcript
Person 1: So Lupe, you have an extremely large family compared to family sizes here in the United States. How was that? How was that growing up with such a large family?
Lupe: Yeah, coming here to the United States, it was really strange for me to see how small families were and me coming from such a big family where there's, I have five brothers and six sisters. So five boys, seven girls, there's 12 of us and we all have the same mom and dad. And at times it can be a little rough because growing up, at one point we did all live together. Now it's not as hard because there is a big age difference between the oldest and the youngest. I am the youngest girl and I have a younger brother. My oldest brother now is 40, married, lives in his own house. And most of my older brothers and sisters are all married and have their kids and have also moved out. It's not as tough anymore.
Lupe: What I love about having such a big family is that now they all have babies. So there's 23 nephews and nieces. So when we have get-togethers, it's really an amazing party because there's so many people there just with our immediate family. The kids are running around, playing, all the women are hanging out, talking, and the guys are also doing their thing. And there's also a lot of birthday parties, as you can imagine. There's so many birthdays throughout the year.
Lupe: So there's always a party. There's always someone to talk to. There's always someone to go to. Although it can really hurt your pocket around Christmas time because there's 23 nephews and nieces to buy presents for and there's also 11 siblings to buy presents. The family's only getting larger because you also have to think about them getting married. So now I have sister-in-laws, now I have brother-in-laws, and there's still a few of us that are not married. So the family's only going to get bigger, for sure.
Person 1: What was the hardest part about growing up in a family that large?
Lupe: I think the hardest part about it when I was little was I think my parents didn't have the resources to raise all of us in maybe the way they wish they could have. There wasn't always enough money to make sure that everybody was well-dressed or even that there was enough food. As the older siblings started growing up and being old enough that they could work, they became an essential part of the family and started helping with the income, the family income. That made it a lot easier for us younger ones growing up. They had it a little tougher than we did because they had to work a lot since they were really young to make sure that the rest of us had everything we needed. That was definitely the hardest part.
Lupe: For more UN videos visit www.un.org