Sorry for the hiatus -- I've moved again
Every few months, my family and I move household, just to stay in fighting trim. Our current coordinates are now here. Ponce, Puerto Rico is a very strange place. It's ... it's like New Castle, Indiana, in that there are townies and non-townies, but the townies have been here for five hundred years. It's part of the United States. Kind of. It's a foreign country. Kind of. It's tropical, but dry. It's hot, but breezy.
We're here because my son is healthier here. We're not sure why, but when you're talking about allergies and kidney disease, you don't argue, you just go with what works. For some reason, his physical health is better here. Socially things are different; we don't speak Spanish very well, and so things can get somewhat sparse. But we do have a lot of friends in town (we've been here off and on for three years now) and so we get by. But after about six months to a year, you start thinking of those libraries and restaurants in Bloomington, and then you decide to go back. Or you start thinking about Europe. That's the last two times we left Puerto Rico. But proteinuria lab results bring us back every time. We just wish we knew why...
Anyway, all is not lost with respect to AppAWeek; as soon as I have a reliable Internet connection, now that the Indiana house has been made ready for the market and the Puerto Rico household has again been retrieved from the storage unit, I should be ready to reengage. In the meantime, um, I dunno, go play Tetris or whatever the kids are doing this year.
posted by Michael @ 5:07 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Hi:
I live in Ponce. Maybe because all my life I lived here it does not seem strange to me. I hope your son health improves. I'm a father of two and I'll be willing to relocate if the life of my sons depends on it. Enjoy your stay here and maybe someday you will feel "ponceño" too.
RTM-Ponce
My wife and I consider that we are contributing to Ponce's ethnic diversity by living here. Actually, this is our third relocation to Ponce, and I only say it's a strange place because the strangeness of Ponce sort of creeps up on you. On the surface, it's a perfectly normal American city with the main language Spanish instead of English, but there is a lot of cultural difference under the surface that I, at least, found surprising.
But hey, as you know, Ponce es Ponce, and even Bloomington, Indiana turns out to be just parking -- both the kids are healthier here, but especially our son does a lot better here. We first moved here three years ago, and loved it (although without significant Spanish ability it's hard to socialize with people -- we speak lots of languages, but none of them are Spanish).
Then my wife's mother's health took a turn for the worse, so we packed up, sold the van, and moved to Budapest to be closer to her. Well, Budapest was not good for the boy -- air pollution, probably, plus worse (although tasty!) diet. So we returned to Ponce, but in a different apartment which we didn't like nearly as much. All in all, our second try wasn't nearly as nice, and we ran into financial problems with our real estate in Indiana, and so last year it was back to Bloomington, to sell a house and fix the other one up.
But his health was poorer there, too. There are no good swimming opportunities in the winter months (the YMCA has a mold problem and the Indiana University pool is far too cold for children and other weaklings, like myself), and we made nearly a year, but then just before the maple pollen season we found that our old apartment, the one with the rooftop terrace in Paseo del Rey, was available again.
Well, it was obviously fate. And so here we are. Again. And his lab values are already getting better, and we've only been here two weeks. So we're faced with the conclusion that a large factor in his health is almost certainly airborne mold spores and dust mites (which we've known for a long time) and that all our efforts to control them in Indiana were insufficient (which I was really hoping wasn't the case.)
The short version is: we love Ponce. My wife never wants to leave. But I miss Bloomington. The fact that the public library will (FINALLY) be opening soon will help, but damn I wish Borders would go ahead and open here -- Mayagüez is too long a drive.
I miss Bloomington's range of restaurants, the university itself, and the truly excellent public library. And to be honest, I miss the easy English-language banter with Hoosiers. I wasn't always so lazy, but with age one likes to hear the accents of one's childhood occasionally.
But my Spanish is slowly getting better, and of course we have a lot of friends here in town. And maybe one more, eh? What's your story, RTM-Ponce?
Bueno espero entiendas un poquito el español ya que yo no soy muy diestro escribiendo en ingles. En parte comprendo tu desesperación al estar en Ponce y no tener quizas un Borders cerca, buenos restaurantes y una vida social activa. Para empezar te puedo decir vivi en Ponce toda mi infancia, adolecencia... en fin hasta los 25 años de edad. Soy ponceño, pero lamentablemente tengo que admitir que Ponce esta en un letargo, esta todo estancado, aun sabiendo que la economia en general esta en una resecion. De todos modos no quiero agobiarte con eso, y mucho menos te escribo para hablar mal de mi pueblo, mas bien me tome el atrevimiento para aconsejarte que te mudes a Parque Escorial ubicado en el municipio de Carolina, es un sitio bien nice. Tienes de todo, desde un Starbuck's Cofee, Borders, cinemas, Wal-Mart, home depot, TGI Friday's, Uno Chicago Bar and Grill, Long Horn, etc y etc, y todo a pocos metros, no es necesario usar carro ya que todo esta accesible y puedes caminar a cualquira de estos lugares. Tambien de Parque Escrial te puedo decir que es una comunidad de multiples complejos de walk-up ubicado en una loma, es fresco, un ambiente de vida super bueno, en fin si te enumero todos sus atributos nunca terminaria. Solo busca informacion y verás que el cambio te vendria bien.
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