A Quick Update as We Settle

The DR is full of slow and now I am officially part of it as you can tell by my lack of blogging. Actually, we have been limited by the fact that we did not have functioning internet at our apartment util this week. We hope to be up and rolling with that very soon and then get all kinds of fun stories and images up on the blog. We are here now. Somewhat unbelievingly, we realize that future trips out of the country will lead us returning to Santo Domingo instead of Portland. Here are some pics of what awaits for visitors and for us over the next few years.

 After our first blog post one person responded by asking for me to share more about the emotions behind our experience so far. In short it has been exciting with a mixed bag of wows and woes. We find ourselves sometimes questioning how it is we have chosen to live in a crazy, hot, and polluted city outside of the US, but would never think of doing so inside of the US. When we occasionally fill with frustration at the diesel exhaust from generators that are on due to yet another brown out, we also quickly remind ourselves of the joy that comes from fresh tropical fruit, abundant sunshine, Merengue music, and the seemingly endless smiles of our Dominican coworkers.

Sometimes we feel a sense of loss at the thought of our former community, our garden, and our weekend activities. We also  feel a sense relief that comes with the total shift of lifestyle patterns. We have more time and of a huried never caugth up feeling, at least so far. There is almost a buffer from reality and I keep waiting for mortgage, tax, and investment worries to come crashing upon us. Can we run away from all that? Do we want to?

More to come now that we have some functioning internet at home! Here’s some info on subscribing to the blog shared by other readers.

1) You can subscribe from within Firefox, under the bookmarks page, choose ’subscribe to this page’

2) If you have a Google account, it’s pretty easy. Go to http://feedburner.google.com. You can set up email subscriptions or an RSS feed. It’ll walk you through it.