McGraw©Hill/Focus/Facing East p. 448////R7N26/ ***** If you were to meet me in the halls of Canyon High School,
you'd probably think I'm your basic teen©aged girl. In some ways
I am. I wash my hair every three days; I play forward on the
school basketball team and I love Elton John just like all my
friends. But I'm also a Hopi Indian. The word Hopi means peace.
I like that. I also like to watch the morning sun transform
our pueblo into a city of gold. And I like going to kachina
dances and eating piki, which is the most delicious bread ever
invented. Still, it's a little strange to be a Hopi and an
American at the same time. Like last Saturday I wore a dress
woven for me by my grandfather, who had made it just as his
father's father's father's father had done. And I can carry
water in a clay olla on my head©©just as my ancestors did a
thousand years ago. But today I'm wearing jeans and a lab coat, and I just
finished dissecting a frog in biology class. I often feel that I
live in two separate worlds. My father wants me to give up one of them. It's because I
want to be a doctor. He thinks that is ridiculous and won't even
discuss it. That's why I was afraid to tell him I had been
accepted in the medical science division at Skyline High School
in Phoenix, two hundred miles away. Skyline has been my dream ever since my seventh©grade
teacher told me about it.