Gabriela Sayuri Motoyama Caiado

About me

Dear reader,

            My name´s Gabriela Sayuri and I´m 13 years old. I´m quite short and I have brown, long hair. When I was a baby, my eyes used to be green, but now they´re brown, just like my hair. Everybody says I´m calm and hard-working. Well, I always try to do my best and I´m also very shy.

            I have one sister called Sofia Massae. She´s two years old and, in my opinion, she´s the cutest thing in the world. She may be a little stubborn, though. But she´s still my cute little sister and I love her as much as I love my family. Most people don´t know, but the names Sayuri and Massae are actually names, not surnames. My father´s name is Ricardo, he´s an engineer and my mother´s called Angela Hissae and she´s a doctor.

            I love my family and my friends. I don’t have many friends, but I know I can trust them and they always help me get through difficult situations. I love drawing, even though I would like to improve my drawing. I also really like reading mangas and watching animes. I also like reading books. I´ve already read the Harry Potter and Hunger Games collection and I really enjoyed them (they´re my favorite ones). I LOVE Japanese food (actually, I love the Japanese culture, in general) and cute sweets, specially the little ones .  I don´t like violence and wars and I can´t stand messy rooms. I love neat, organized places, because I think it´s somehow healthy and when I set things in an organized  way, I feel really good. I usually family gatherings, on special events like Christmas, New Year´s Eve, Easter and birthdays. Normally, we meet with my mother´s family side, because I guess we go along really well with them. I only don´t like those reunions when a lot of people make me questions, because I hate scrutiny.

            At home, I sometimes have to take care of my sister, to help my parents. I enjoy doing it, because she´s really funny and makes me laugh a lot. I must finish my homework before doing whatever I want. This is just something I set to myself. My mom also says I mustn´t go to bed late, otherwise I can´t get up in the next day ( I forgot to say, but I´m also but I´m sleepyhead, too)

            I´ve never stopped to think about how many hours a week I spend doing something. However, let´s just try to say it clearly enough to be understood. Well, I spend 2/3 hours a week training Kung-Fu and I have Japanese classes twice a week. So I may spend about 3 hours a week studying Japanese. About homework, I guess I spend about 7 or 8 hours a week .

            I really haven’t made up my mind yet, but I would like to become a lawyer. I still have time to decide, though. Anyway, I not sure if I’d like to live abroad, my family will come with my, definitely. 

            

Sharing Life Stories

My great grandmother is called Deolinda. She was born in 1925 in São Paulo. During her childhood she lived in Belém (not the city, but a São Paulo district which is near downtown); after she got married, she moved to Pompeia and later on, they moved to Freguesia do Ó. She is a very kind, gentle woman and she loves looking after children. She had two daughters, but she has already taken care of three generations: my grandmother´s, my father´s and mine! She has lived so much and I have many stories to tell about her. Unfortunately, I´ll have to choose only one story… But it is a very funny one.

The story I´ll tell you happened when my great grandmother was just 20 years old. My great-grandparents were newlywed and it was their first month living together. My great-grandfather had given my great-grandmother that month´s payment (since in that time, it was common for woman to get and manage the family´s money) and left to his work.

But there was a misunderstanding: my great-grandmother had come from a rich family (for example, when she had a party, her parents bought her two or dresses) , and she thought that that amount of money was only one part of his payment. Because of that, she called my great-grandfather´s sister and they went shopping. She bought many pieces of “trousseau” for her and also as presents.

When my great-grandfather came back from his work, he asked about the money. My great-grandmother was very happy as she showed what she had bought. She´d finished showing everything, but my great-grandfather asked: “Okay. Now, what else did you buy? Have you made the grocery shopping?”

She had no answer, because she hadn´t bought anything else. He asked again: “Deolinda, what else did you buy?”, but then he realized it, “Oh God, don´t tell me you spent everything I gave you… Deolinda, that money was our whole month´s payment! It was all we had to live during this month!”

Both of them were shocked with the situation and there was a moment they stayed in complete silence. After some time, my great-grandfather said: “Well, it´s not your falt. You didn´t know it was all we had. I should have made it clear to you. Don´t worry, we´ll find a way to go through this, right?”

I don´t really know how they managed to do it, but in the end they did it (I guess they returned the dresses and got the money back). The only thing I´m sure is that after this incident, my great grandmother never spent too much money again, until today.