I’m not really sure where to start when writing about mi hermana querida, Lupita.  She’s amazing, but she doesn’t know it.  Self-effacing, but without a trace of false humility.  Sharp as a tack, but tells me that I’m the smart one.  I’m fortunate to know Lupita.  As an orator whose name I’ve forgotten once put it, “I think she hung the moon and can take it down whenever she wants, and I hope she never does.”

Reared by Latin-American parents, one of eleven siblings, she was speaking the language I’m growing to love almost from birth.  English is her second language, but she’s every bit as adept with it.  Lupita once told me that she thinks her most personal thoughts in Spanish, everything else in English.  How great to be able to function that way!  It’s what I aspire to do one day.

While she is currently working as a computer technician, mi hermana gemela once taught in an English as a Second Language (ESL) environment in the small town where she grew up.  She remembered just how hard it was for her when she began learning in an English-speaking community as a girl from a Spanish-speaking family, and she wanted to help those kids have an advantage she didn’t.  What a sweetheart!

Lupita is also very much into physical fitness and training.  One of the first things I heard her talk about when we began working together back in 2014 is that she was participating in a 100-push-ups-per-day challenge.  Yes, you read that right.  A tiny, 5’5″ lady with a very slender build, she is an iron-pumping, bleacher-running dynamo.  And she’s inspiring me on that front, too, as I’ve recently begun dropping some inches at the waist and adding some in the arms and shoulders.

Of course, if you’ve read my About Joaquin page, you know that Lupita is not really my twin sister.  (At least in the genetic sense.)  However, it’s a modest reflection how much she means to me.  She is a compassionate, smart, fun-to-be-around lady, and it often seems to me — to both of us — that we’ve known each other for a lifetime.  (We certainly wish we had.)

Lupita will be my mentor throughout this learning process, if I can keep from annoying her with all my many questions and by my begging her to converse with me in Spanish more frequently.  I’ve found Lupita to be very longsuffering in that regard, but, then again, some have accused me of being absolutely insufferable when I’m obsessed with a topic.  If I treat her right, perhaps I can even convince her to contribute a post here now and then.  Perhaps you can convince her, for that matter.  It’s a long shot, but worth the effort.

If you haven’t figured it out yet…

¡Me gusta Lupita muchísimo!