English schools in Santo Domingo

amartinez

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Try to locate a vew website for English schools in DR.. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks.
 

amartinez

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Wow Keith, you are really good at this, huh? You can answer all my questions.. I should have came on board a long time ago.
 

Keith R

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amartinez said:
Wow Keith, you are really good at this, huh? You can answer all my questions.. I should have came on board a long time ago.
Well, don't know about "really good" or being able to answer all your questions... but I taught at ICDA 1996-98 and lived in SD for 4 yrs with young bilingual children, so bilingual schools in SD is something I know a bit about ;) ...
Best Regards,
Keith
 

amartinez

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So, are you one of the ones that decided that DR was not for you and relocated back to the States?
 

Keith R

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amartinez said:
So, are you one of the ones that decided that DR was not for you and relocated back to the States?
Although I have discussed why my family went and why we left before on DR1 (probably in the archives somewhere), I'm not going to bore people by rehashing it.

Suffice it to say that I did not go to the DR to escape US life, nor did I go with the idea of permanently staying there, although if conditions were right I was not at all adverse to living there long-term. We went for specific reasons, had our share (some might say more than our share! but I choose not to look on it so negatively) of challenges but many, many positive benefits from the experience as well, and after four years, were ready to go back to the US when the right opportunity came to make it so.

Also, I might add that my wife, a Dominican who had left SD for NYC when she was 17 and was delighted at first to live again 20 yrs later in her hometown, was glad when we moved back to Virginia and to this day says she has no desire to return to live once more in the DR. Visit, yes, always, but live full-time, no.

But in the final analysis it's an individual calculus we must all make, and I could tell you all sorts of pluses and minuses about SD life based on my own experience and that of friends and family still there, but if you're bent on going, you will and you will not truly take to heart what I say until you've had to live it yourself....

Regards,
Keith
 
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amartinez

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You are so right. Maybe like you I will try it for a year or two and see how it goes. I don't think I will make NY my home again, if things don't work out in DR, I am thinking Florida.

Thanks for the great advice.
 

Keith R

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Jan 1, 2002
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amartinez said:
You are so right. Maybe like you I will try it for a year or two and see how it goes. I don't think I will make NY my home again, if things don't work out in DR, I am thinking Florida.

Thanks for the great advice.
A sus ordenes.

An additional word of caution from someone who's been there, done that: a critical factor not to underweight in your calculus should be who is going to take care of your kids when they're home from school and while you are at work and in transit thereto/therefrom.

Usually people contemplating a move to SD automatically respond with "oh, my ____ (fill in blank: mother-in-law, sister, cousin, aunt, friend) has told me that they would be happy to watch the kids for me..."

We responded that way too, and firmly believed it when moving to SD. But the promises of familial help evaporated once we arrived. And we discovered in talks with others moving there (many of them with Dominican family in SD) that something similar happened to them. Don't know why, but just saying don't necessarily put too much stock on such promises of help.

Instead, put into your pre-move calculus that a live-in maid or nanny may be necessary. This is not just a question of money, but of aggravation: we went through a year and six different live-in maids before we found one that actually did a decent job and we felt we could trust with our kids. One of the maids actually disappeared on us in the middle of the afternoon, leaving two confused and scared 5-yr olds alone in a house....

Best regards,
Keith