I know that I have not done a very good job of explaining why we came
back to the U. S., and I also know that many folks may think I’m just a
negative kind of person, who is not happy anywhere, or it is my bad
karma, or may have any number of wrong impressions. Recently, on my
forum (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CRRealists/message/1590)
a thread has been running all about why I came back to the U. S. I did
at first take exception to the implications in the original question
from a forum member, but then an established ex-pat, one who had been in
Costa Rica longer than I, entered the discussion with a very nicely
written, well thought out response. I would like to not only share this
line of thought, but express my gratitude to Arden Brink, who said it
all much better than I could ever do.
You can follow her Blog, by the way, at:
http://the-ex-expat.com
If you would rather just read what she had to say instead of following the link to the entire thread, here are her two posts:
Hi, everyone, I’m a lurker here — don’t think I’ve ever posted and,
by and large, I’m not interested in much of the snarkiness that goes on
here. BUT, with the thought that some folks might actually come to the
group looking for real information, I thought I’d bite the bullet and
jump in with a reply to Ron as well. [Warning: LONG post. I'm making up
for never posting with one epic post.]
Unlike John (and Carole) who
have had really unfortunate experiences in Costa Rica, leaving them with
a distinct dislike of the country, we moved to CR in ’06 and actually
really loved it. We were very active in our local community, we rented
for a long time and then bought, we volunteered at our local school, I
was one of the founders of the Community Action Alliance, we had lots of
friends, never were ripped off by our lawyer/builder/plumber/etc. so –
in general — had a VERY POSITIVE experience. And yet, about six months
ago, we moved back to the U.S. (yes, initially to the shock and
amazement of many of our friends) and we love it here.
So — what
happened and how have we found it to be in the U.S.? Well, first and
foremost, the U.S. is a BIG country, so as the saying goes, your mileage
may vary and your experiences may be completely different. The
motivation for us to come back came when we spent several weeks with our
newborn granddaughter last year. Our kids already lived cross-country
when we moved to CR which meant it hadn’t felt like any big “loss” to us
to move “so far away,” so we were surprised to find how strongly we
felt when the grandbaby entered the picture about *not* being a
“once-a-year-visit” family any more. So that’s where the
process started.
Once
we got into talking about it, though, we found that there was a lot
about Costa Rica that we were “accepting” just because we were there and
had planned on continuing to live there, so why complain about
something you can’t change. But the simple fact is that we DID find
that costs had risen a LOT since ’06 so the entire logic of our being
there for the “lower cost of living” wasn’t really panning out any more.
The hassles and inefficiencies of a Latin American society were again
something that we’d just accepted (with the “it is what it is”
philosophy) but I can’t say we truly enjoyed those things. And even the
idyllic year-round spring weather of CR becomes a little less idyllic as
you begin to accumulate more rainy seasons under your belt.
What all
that means is we represent an interesting “middle-ground” — I suppose
if we’d absolutely adored living in Costa Rica and felt *no*
dissatisfaction with anything, we might have figured out a different way
to solve the family issues. And yet we weren’t deeply unhappy with CR
by any means, so without the new grandbaby, we might have muddled along
for who knows how much longer before feeling, much less voicing, the
“what if we went back?” question.
HOWEVER, as I say, now that we ARE
back in the U.S., we like it tremendously. The array of food available
to us is almost dazzling and we spend much less on much better food than
we did in Costa Rica. Now, of course, there’s also very expensive food
available here but a key is simply that there is such a WIDE variety of
food that with even a slight bit of “paying attention” you can eat much
better for less money. And organic food is readily available, right in
the supermarket in practically every “category” of food, not to mention
the farmers market, whereas — as we came to sadly find out — pesticide
use in CR is at a beastly high level, and you sure don’t walk into your
local supermarket and find
an organic version of practically every
kind of food you could want to buy (for only a small price increase over
the non-organic version, in most cases). So, food has been a real
winner here.
I say we moved “back” but we did not, in fact, move back
to the place we came from. Our kids no longer lived in Maine where we’d
been, and the whole point is to be near them, so we moved to Utah where
our daughter and her family live (which has the benefit of also putting
us comparatively close to our son in CA) and we’re lucky that the
economy is Utah didn’t take nearly as big a hit as in some other parts
of the U.S. So we’re not seeing any of that “dreariness” that seems to
exist in other places.
And despite being liberal democrats in a
largely republican state (and buddhists in a largely mormon state) we’ve
found people to be very open, welcoming, incredibly nice, and really a
pleasure to be around. (And although one of the reasons we moved to CR
was to have the “adventure” of having to learn to speak Spanish, and we
did become what I would call “functional” in the language, it’s actually
still very welcome to us to be able to live our lives back in our
native language.)
Housing costs here are slightly higher than in CR,
but not by a lot. Our dear friends who also just moved back here with us
bought a somewhat larger house here for about the same as they’d sold
their house there for. Of course, their house there was sold furnished
and had great views off to the Gulf of Nicoya and toucans in the yard,
which they don’t have here, but they do have mountain views here, a
lovely yard with apple and maple trees, a paved street in front of them,
and a great array of services, stores, medical care, etc. all around
them. They feel that it was a comfortable and worthwhile trade. We’re
renting, partly by choice, partly because we’re not “mortgage material”
at the moment. And I actually think it’s never a bad idea to consider
renting when you move someplace new until you get the feel for it. On
the other hand, if buying is an option for someone — whether in the U.S.
or Costa RIca — if you decide to sell after five years, you could
theoretically afford to take a pretty
big “loss” even over your
original purchase price (much less over the purchase rice + profit that
most of us tend to expect when we sell) when you compare it to the
“loss” of what you could have spent in rent. The challenge often is that
folks often don’t *want* to take a $40k to $80k loss on the purchase
price of their house even though they would’ve easily spent that on rent
over those same five years. So I don’t think it’s nearly as simple an
argument as people suggest.
What’s more expensive here? Veterinary
care, for one, as well as medical care for humans — IF you have to pay
out-of-pocket or buy “regular” health insurance. In our case, both our
friends and we (my husband and mom, anyway) are able to make use of
their Medicare which makes the U.S. a winner hands-down in that regard.
And Utah turns out to be a very “healthy” state so that a back-up plan
of catastrophic insurance for us non-Medicare-age youngsters is actually
less than we were paying the CAJA in CR (when you combine us and my
mom). Of course, if I just need to go to the doctor or dentist here, it
will definitely cost more than it would in CR. Cars and gasoline, of
course, cost much less here, while insurance “costs more” here only
because we barely carried any insurance (too expensive) in Costa Rica.
Our utilities here — electricity and gas — are much less, our satellite
TV is less for way better service, although our cell phone here is more
expensive, primarily due to our having a “smart phone” here with much
more extensive service than we had in CR. (Basic cell service is a real
bargain in Costa Rica, although buying the phone itself is not.)
Much
has been written about the huge percentage of people who move to Costa
Rica and move back within a year — strongly implying that they hadn’t
“done their homework” and had made, for them, a “wrong choice” to move. I
never saw that to be true — at least, *nowhere near* the 40 to 60%
figure often touted – but what we ARE seeing, now that some years have
passed since we moved to CR, is that for a large (and growing) number of
people, it’s a great life adventure that they’re glad they undertook,
but in the end, it’s not something they want to be permanent after all.
Although
I *do* somewhat understand the reaction of folks still living IN Costa
Rica to the tales of those going back — that somehow the “returnees”
have made a mistake that they could have avoided if they’d been more
diligent somehow, smarter, better, rented instead of bought, etc. etc. —
in my own experience that’s a misplaced reaction. Why do we turn it
into an endurance contest? Or why do we judge it as a “mistake” at all
if someone decides to return?
Truthfully, I think the next ten years
will see probably a majority of folks returning since I think, deep
down, many people will find that underneath it all, they don’t want to
be “ex-patriots” for the rest of their lives. And that’s fine. And for
the ones that *do* decide to stay in a foreign country forever? That’s
fine too. Neither one is somehow better than the other. And I think
people will continue to move to CR. And many of those folks will return
as well. All good.
A little long for a Yahoo group posting? Yep. But
seems like maybe some real information might be useful to those folks
looking for it. As I say, YMMV and this is ONLY our experience. We’re
totally glad we moved to Costa Rica. And we’re totally glad that we’ve
now moved to Utah. And who knows where we’ll be in another six years.
But
we now have a LOT of friends from CR who are now living back in the
U.S. and not a single one of them says they regret moving back, even
though most of them don’t regret having moved to CR in the first place
either.
Take from that what you will.
–arden—
And, then, later in follow up, she posted this:
— In
CRRealists@yahoogroups.com, “lenpetry”
wrote:
Would you say that those who adamantly defend Costa Rica against any
and all criticisms are in denial, or do they truly not care about the
many small problems you mention? >>>
Interesting question, and not to nit-pick about “language” but the
very word “denial” tends to carry a negative connotation, doesn’t it,
which makes the distinction a particularly interesting one.
What I’ve
observed over the years is that while some people do, indeed, find
right from the beginning they are “bothered” by the cultural differences
in Costa Rica (they are, perhaps, the unknown percentage who do
actually return home rather promptly), most people seem to experience
what we might call a honeymoon phase. The oddities and exasperations are
all part of the adventure, likely not even to be experienced as
“exasperations” at all, except perhaps for the pseudo-drama of it when
relating their experiences to sympathetic friends.
In
fact, I see a lot of newcomers react quite badly to perceived
“criticisms” of Costa Rica and, again, I can really relate from our own
experiences. It’s only natural, even if subconscious, to feel that other
people going back, or even just expressing dissatisfaction with CR, is
perhaps a judgement (however unintended) of your own choice to move to
CR — an implied questioning of your own wisdom, if you will. (And who
amongst us likes to have their wisdom questioned?)
Is this denial? I
would simply call it looking at their experiences through the optimism
that’s appropriate to someone newly embarking upon a life adventure (of
their own choosing) and goodness knows *we* certainly experienced that.
We truly couldn’t understand folks who “gave up and went home” because
we “enjoyed”
all those oddities as part of our chosen new lifestyle.
And yes, I’m ashamed to admit, to at least some small degree we probably
judged them as somehow deficient in their capacity to adapt while we
were clearly superior in *our* ability!
Then, as years goes by, as
I’ve noticed now — and not just “transferring” our own experiences to
everyone else, but from many conversations with now many friends who
have returned — when those same oddities and exasperations have perhaps
lost some of their charm, well, I guess “denial” would be a potentially
accurate term, although again I’m not entirely happy to imply the
negative overtones that we apply to the word.
Until such time as you
actually DO — for whatever reasons — voice the “what if” question, and
then decide to, indeed, return, there you are — *living* in Costa Rica.
Is it going to serve your life any better by acknowledging – dare we say
complaining about — those issues? Or is it just a good, solid “make
lemonade out of lemons” approach to life?
I’m sure people care about
and are “bothered” to greater and lesser degrees by the challenges — as
I’ve often commented, we really did NOT consider ourselves to be
significantly bothered — but “being bothered by” is not a static and
defined thing. It’s a matter of our own “choosing” how we will
experience things, how we will “process” if you will what we experience,
and is a very fluid thing.
I do find it difficult to believe that
there are very many gringos who are truly NEVER bothered by these things
(as one might think when reading the vehement discussions that do take
place!) And, ironically, I tend to think that those who are the most
adamant that there are no problems whatsoever in Costa Rica, and
certainly none that would ever in a million years send them back to the
U.S. (or Canada), *those* are the folks that I would be most inclined to
apply the denial label to.
Perhaps even then, though, it’s a matter
of emotional survival. I suspect there is the unspoken (unrecognized,
even) fear that if they started “allowing in” the “realities” they might
be opening the floodgates, and then — god forbid – they might be the
ones back in the U.S. someday. And, for anyone who considers that a
failure of some sort… well, you can see why they don’t want to open
Pandora’s Box. To me the very willingness to acknowledge the challenges
while making a choice (for however long one chooses) to live in CR
*anyway* is the sign of a healthy relationship with the country and with
themselves. But, I think that’s true no matter where you live — I guess
it’s just that we see less “all or nothing”
attitude if folks were to be discussing, say, the relative merits of living in one state vs. another.
Let’s face it — many Ticos are all too aware of the challenges of living in
Costa
Rica, and many will quite freely criticize the very things that come up
to gringos as negatives — rising costs, crime rates, problems with the
CAJA, etc. etc. — but the simple truth is the overwhelming majority of
them don’t have the option of simply picking up and moving to the states
(or anywhere else for that matter). So are the ones that don’t complain
living in denial? At least, when relating to Ticos, one could argue
that “the way things are” is all they’ve ever known (unlike most of us
who have come from a place where things are, actually, quite different)
so they might genuinely be less likely to be bothered by some of the
same stuff for they have no personal point of reference. But, for most
gringos, I think the challenges are there to be seen by anyone with
their eyes open. The choice then simply becomes how to “interact” with
and “feel” about those challenges, which (after yet another epic-length
post) brings us back around to my original position that to stay in CR
is good, if that’s
your choice. To return to your homeland (the U.S.
for most of us) is also good, if that’s your choice. To condemn others
for *their* choices, not so good in my book. But that’s just me.
–arden–
