The signal hummed promptly at 11:55 a.m., and the noise in the carpeted halls of Chaska High School rose to a low roar.

Lunchtime. A throng of students thundered toward the cafeteria, which smelled of sour milk and teen sweat.

Sophomore Denise Soriano hurried in, a cell phone stuck to her ear, and plunked down at the usual table. The dialogue came in quick spurts of animated Spanglish. Today, the talk was of graffiti reportedly scrawled on the wall of a boys bathroom.

Beaner. Spic. Wetback.

"People think we're gangsters, but it's not like that," said Denise, who is 15 and Mexican-American.

Her friend shook his head. "I didn't see the graffiti, but why would anyone do that?" said Jose Acevedo. "It makes me feel, not angry, but sad -- about the way humans treat other humans."

The conversation at Denise's table drifted to the usual topics. This girl. That guy. Homework. The weekend. They laughed and nibbled French fries, just like the tables of mostly white students around them.

But different.

To listen to these high school students is to hear the new voices of the suburbs. Across the metro, as elsewhere in the country, immigrants are moving from the core cities and inner-ring suburbs out into far-flung suburbs and exurbs. And the migration is changing the rhythm of suburban life.

They're drawn by the same desires as other suburbanites -- cheaper homes, newer schools, a quieter pace of life. From Chaska to Woodbury to Blaine, the faces in classrooms, workplaces and churches are growing more diverse.

In 1970, federal census-takers failed to find a single example of what they then called "Spanish-American persons" in the farming community of Chaska, the seat of Carver County. At the time, just 10 people in the town of more than 4,000 were part of a minority group.

Now Chaska is part of a phenomenon demographers call "rural-Metro Hispanics" -- immigrants who discover cheaper housing on the rural fringes of rich, fast-growing metro areas.

By 1980 the census found 35 Latinos in Chaska, a number that doubled by 1990. The trickle turned into a wave in the 1990s as the number of Latinos rose to 1,000 by the year 2000.

Chaska now has its own Hispanic bakery, grocery store, international money-wiring operations, and Spanish-language radio station. And it remains one of the richest (and whitest) suburbs in the metro area.

While the town has a charming square at its core, the real crossroads of the community occurs in the schools. Even as many of the first-generation immigrants keep to themselves, school is where their children are assimilating into the community, trying to balance two cultures, two worlds.

"The girls, in particular, are caught up in a world where they don't belong anywhere," said Maria Ochoa, a Spanish teacher at Chaska High School. "At home, they have to be very Latino, very traditional. They have to follow Mom's and Dad's rules, which are very strict. But then when they come to school, they have to be very Americanized because they need to feel that they fit in."

From the 'Pickle Pits' to Cologne

For nearly a decade, the Soriano family lived in a trailer at Riverview Terrace. The mobile home park is known locally as the Pickle Pits because it's near the Gedney pickle factory, which has employed many Latinos over the years.