trust

suzanne, you asked becky exactly what i was wondering. the idea of her personal crusade to save others from her 'mistake' seems very misguided to me. i'm sorry becky that you had such a rough time, but after a meer 13 months of vi life, does that really qualify you as the patron anti-saint of the hopeful relocators?
do you really find squashing people's dreams a meritorious past time?
i have many friends who moved here with little money and are very content. certainly many, (if not the majority), of virgin island residents have very little money.
i feel that you are living in the past for some reason and perhaps should let go of your virgin island fetish as it seems to have no connection to your present life. you tried it; it wasn't for you; you paid a hefty price; now move on. no one objects to your opinions or posts, its just that it is rather a shock to discover that you are not a resident, rather, a wanted to be and it didn't work ran home.
i also agree that the simple experience of trying to make a go of it is an education well worth the ticket price of admission. thanks suzanne for your inquiry, it shed some light on the poster's opinions for me.

Okay, I said I wouldn't reply to idiocy, but here I go...you said we were wanna-bes and "it didn't work" and we "ran home". Not hardly. I don't think you know the circumstances - and my husband was a pharmacist TRYING to make a difference - we truly felt he could help in an area where diabetes and hypertension ran rampant. He loves to educate people on how to enrich and extend their lives....instead he was caught on a hamster wheel and never even got to know his customers. That's just not how he practices his medicine - he had no time to counsel anyone about anything, and for someone who pursued a doctorate in an effort to perfect his craft and his profession, it was (so to speak) a bitter pill to swallow. That had NOTHING to do with the island itself, other than the few people he tried to talk to just weren't interested - that had more to do with the limited services available. Yes, we wanted to live in the Caribbean - but he truly believed he could make a difference. But Suzanne, get real - do you honestly think it's everyone's life's dream to move to the Caribbean and have a burning mission to be a public servant? Wow - if that happened, just think of what a place it would be...but I seriously doubt very many people move down to the Caribbean to be social or religious or medical missionaries.

We weren't just goof-offs that ended up there on a whim. We tried to be involved in the community to some degree, and we didn't do things exactly right.....we compounded our problems and I've covered that in other posts.

My point is that you can go there with little to no money, or a very good professional job, and it simply doesn't work for you, so don't put all your eggs in one basket. I would advise anyone moving to Alaska the same thing - when you are moving to a locale where you can't load up your U-Haul and "run home" it's a little different. I've always said - I would not take a million bucks for the experiences we had - however, had we thought it through a little more we might not have made the decision we did at the point we did in our lives. There's so much to be considered, and we all get saltwater and blue skies in our eyes....it happens...but you have to consider your overall life picture and the "what ifs" to some degree, if only for a split second in time. You can't live on "what ifs", I realize that - but the damnedest things happen at the damnedest times in your life. My aging father was certainly not going to get any younger while I was out snorkeling, but little did I realize how quickly he would go downhill after our departure.

Maybe I'm the weird one, but I simply want to encourage everyone to consider carefully the dream that they have and how things could possibly play out in the foreseeable future - and maybe my husband and I are eternally responsible, but we are all our respective families have. If that's not your situation, then good for you. It WAS ours, and we felt the need to rise to the occasion. Somehow, I gotta believe there's someone out there that is fighting this internal battle as well. If you are heavily intertwined with your families, as we are, then you don't realize the separation factor, and it's pretty impressive when it hits.

This is a HUGE move for most people, to a completely different culture, climate, and environment. Your past, present and future make you who you are - just decide what you can live with and what you can't, but be realistic. We weren't. That's no fetish about the islands, that's my story. Because you don't like the ending doesn't make it any less valid.

Anyone who has lived in the VI for more than a few months can almost smell the ones that won't make it - and we did very well until about our 8th or 9th month there when our world semi-imploded. Who was to know? But if we'd moved to Baltimore, we would have returned too... it just would have been a whole lot easier.

Can we just all agree to disagree, or are we gonna beat this horse some more?

oh shoot - i think you've been served.

becky, i appreciate the candor of your reply and had no feelings whatsoever about its ending; i didn't in fact see it as an ending, as your life is still in progress. i don't however, appreciate your calling my post idiocy, its very rude. i also don't understand the 'dead horse' reference as it was news to me that you had a bad experience and have left the islands. i have lived in the virgin islands for more than a decade. i am well aware of the problems of life here, but don't see them as insurmountable or a reason to caution others that their lives will be destroyed by an attempt at relocation. i would never advise anyone on the choices they make, i find that presumptuous and i personally would not follow life advise i received from an unknown person in cyberspace. this board seems to be designed to answer potential relocators questions about the virgin islands; i find most of their questions to be fairly direct, yet rather than a simple answer to their queries they are asked to reveal further information about themselves, (which is then valued and weighed by a panel of judges; quite a few it seems who don't even live in the virgin islands), and are hosted to a mountain of personal opinion they never solicited. i'm happy to disagree, the question is: why aren't you?

truthbetold, Becky r is giving her opinions and experiences. This is what the relocation board is all about. We come here asking for advice and we all give them or opinions from our perspectives. Whatever point you are trying to make seems more like lets gang up on Becky then any clear argument.

A point of view from people who came and went can be extremely valuable for someone looking to come to the virgin island. As so many people who come here fail (for lack of a better word) to make it here or enjoy it here. The potential relocators should hear their opinions as well to know what the potential problems are. The longer we residents live here the easier it is to loose our prospective of how the islands are different from stateside living and how big a transition it is to living in the usvi. You do get used to go to 3 grocery stores for one meal (very minor problem out of many) and at some point it stops bothering us and it is just the way it is.

I find the question to be far from direct usually they seem more broad and open ended. Questions that we see all the time like will I make it, will I have enough money, etc? These are all hard questions to answer and require the person asking to give us some details into their life for us to be able to help them at all.

If you want simple questions go to the vacation board. That one is direct and simple. This board involves question about people relocating to a culture completely different then the one they grew up in (in most cases). Plenty of well traveled people are shocked to find that they have a difficult time adjusting to life in the islands. It is not like any other place I have lived. It has its pluses and minuses. The pluses mostly often being obvious and usually people think the pluses will out way the minuses and that is not simply the case for most.

's okay, I didn't have any hard feelings about you calling me the patron anti-saint either.

It seems to me that if one is going to claim that folks who moved to the VI and then returned to the states are posting views from sour grapes, one must also allow that folks who moved to the VI and are still here are posting views through rose colored glasses. When people leave one place for another, it is not uncommon for them to compare the negatives of the place they left with the positives of the place they are and determine they made a superlative choice. This means folks who left the states and now live in the VI focus on the positives of the VI and the negatives of the states, while folks who leave the VI for the states focus on the negatives of the VI and the positives of the states. I think residents, former residents and resident-wanna-bes should all have a voice here so that issues can be discussed from all perspectives. I also think it would help everyone evaluate the perspectives of other posters if there were a link on posts that would reveal a posters VI residency status i.e. present, former, future.

Wow, you all! Can we be civil?

Lots of folks want to move here. Many find, like BeckyR, that the reality is not like the dream. Now, people who have had a bad experience tend to be a bit passionate about the experience, but it doesn't make their experience wrong. There are those of us who, for whatever reason, have carved out a satisfying life. We shouldn't get blasted, either.

To those who are looking to move here, listen to both sides of the argument, there is probably a bit of truth in each.

Okay, off my soapbox.

Dear East,

You're right, this is not a contest. The ones who come and, for whatever reason, decide to leave have a valuable point of view that needs to be expressed. They should not be vilified or told that their opinions are not needed on this board. They certainly have a place on this board.

On the other hand (this is why I can't even win an argument with myself) those of us who have found a satisfying life in the VI do not appreciate being told that we are insensitive or stupid or unaware of the problems the VI faces. When someone says they are "baffled" by how any sane person can be happy here or implies that we are not as descerning or particular as the speaker is - well, those who ARE happy here find that a litte annoying.

So, why don't we stick to our own experiences and answer questions as honestly as we can based on what we know.

I, for one, will continue to play devil's advocate when someone says they are moving with no job, no house, no money and 3 kids - or any variation thereof. No one will ever convince me that encouraging such people is anything but cruel. And if you think otherwise who are entitled to your wrong opinion.

As a lurker, and serious potential future Islander, I LOVE all the disagreements. By nature I'm my own devil's advocate. My wife and I are tossing up scenarios and reasons, and immediately taking shots at them. So we enjoy ya'll doing the same, even Becky 😉

Very dissappointed, however, that no one has answered my hockey... Center Ice question. 🙂

If you have a hockey fan in the VI family or neighborhood, I sure would appreciate getting the facts on this issue.

Poor Neil - kicked to the curb with his own post! I'm sorry, I don't know about hockey....but thanks to you and your wife for being great sports as we have our little tiffs from time to time - sorry we hijacked your thread....so I've retitled it in an effort to bring out the men that may be hiding behind their hockey sticks out there....!

We do get most of the "typical" cable sports channels. What channel(s) do you need for hockey?

Hey...thanks for asking %)

But I've decided to start a thread asking about HDtv, satellite, who the carriers are.

You folks can continue your lovespat now 🙂

Hello,

Linda J wrote: “The ones who come and, for whatever reason, decide to leave have a valuable point of view that needs to be expressed. They should not be vilified or told that their opinions are not needed on this board.” and “those of us who have found a satisfying life in the VI do not appreciate being told that we are insensitive or stupid or unaware of the problems the VI faces.”

In a private message regarding a different thread Onika wrote: “I am truly saddened in general by some of the rank meanness from some of the posters.”

Another private message: “There is a difference in expressing an opinion and being downright rude.”

Stxer wrote in a recent thread: “There was a time a few years back when courtesy and acceptance prevailed. It now appears that attack and name calling are the major ingredients.”

As has been mentioned before; negative, positive, old question, new question, silly question, feedback from new resident, old resident, past resident, visitor… its all welcomed & encouraged.

However, it is something very different to:

A: Share a negative experience, to point out when a person’s judgment is off because of incorrect expectations or to express that your own experience differs very much from another person’s experience whether it’s positive or negative. And…

B. Share a negative experience, point out incorrect expectations, express a different point of view and include with these comments insults and rude remarks, tell someone to shut up, that their comments or they themselves are stupid, remark that someone shouldn’t be posting anymore because they don’t live here, their post is ignorant, their English and grammar is bad, that they are a troll (if you think a user is a troll the best reply is No reply), that they are living in pink bubble wrap world or that they are sticking their head in the sand and ignoring local problems. It needs to stop.

Thank you,

--Islander

Islander, thank you for your input. I am mostly a lurker here and have almost given up reading the posts because of the rudeness and name calling. I do hope others can see your point.

Mamalemon

Amen.

Sorry Islander, I just have to respond (hopefully) one last time.....

BeckyR wrote:
"But Suzanne, get real - do you honestly think it's everyone's life's dream to move to the Caribbean and have a burning mission to be a public servant? Wow - if that happened, just think of what a place it would be...but I seriously doubt very many people move down to the Caribbean to be social or religious or medical missionaries."

Often people inquire into teaching opportunities here in the VI and I am mainly addressing them, as well as our travel nurses and others that have a desire to help the community. I will always continue to be an advocate for those that want to come here to make a difference.

I will try my best to refrain from commenting further! Have a super, lovely, wonderful, happy, sparkling day y'all! 🙂