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