I Thought I Was Done Blogging, BUT......

I haven't written anything here in about 6 months. Periodically I think about posting and then it just goes by the boards. I was in Santiago this week and while there I met with two friends. One, Evan is a guy I met about 8 years ago. He owns an English language school in Santiago. Evan has always been talking about leaving the DR, but his business kept him here, although he was gone for long periods. When we met he told me that this time it was for sure that he was not coming back. He is leaving the school in the hands of two trusted employees and he will "monitor" the business from the US.  The other friend, Sal, has been my best friend for the past 36 years. Sal was my business partner and he is my daughter's Godfather. Sal was the first to suggest that I might find the DR to my liking. He has been working here for almost the last 20 years. He, too, is leaving the DR forever. For the past 5 years he has been commuting to the DR spending 10 days here and 4 days at home, which is an amazing amount of travel.

Both Evan and Sal have basically the same reason for leaving. They just can't handle the people here anymore. They can't handle the lack of consideration,ignorance, and rudeness of the Dominicans, just to name a few reasons. No matter how the reason is expressed, it all comes back to the people. They both have met and become friendly with some of the few wonderful Dominicans, but for the most part they just can't handle it any more. The only difference between them and me is that they can leave. I can't.

So I decided while driving back to Bavaro that I would start to chronicle the many things that the three of us find so offsetting. I figured that maybe I would just make a quick entry and run. For example, I might just post under the title Reasons to Leave. In fact that's what I am going to do. I will start with my next post, right now.