So anyone been to puerto rico?
Glock1975
Posts: 5,152 ✭✭✭✭✭
Looking for some info, wife is thinking about taking a chief doctor position through the military there and wondered if anyone has been there?
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My father was the luckiest man in WWII. At the time he graduated OCS, the life of a 2nd Lieutenant was literally 3 weeks ... 2 weeks to get shipped to Italy, four days to find his unit, and three days for a German to shoot the guy in the funny folding hat. Dad got lucky. He was posted to the Carribean in the MPs. Spent his war riding round on an Indian motorcycle with a suicide shift and a corporal in the sidecar, busting drunks and keeping whorehouses straight. Jamaica, Curacao, Aruba, and Puerto Rico. Met Mom there. Pues, entonces mi madre era Boriquena. Consequently, I went several times to visit family; and stayed there for a year as a teenager.
There are no Puerto Ricans. Every last single Arawak was eliminated by the Spaniards. As Ambrose Bierce put it: "ABORIGINIES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize." The island is now peopled mostly by Spanish. My family is Spanish, French, and Italian. The closest you get to natives are the Jibaros, which is basically the PR term for hillbillies. Just like hillbilly, the jibaro is admired for his independent hardworking spirit yet derided as ignorant. Instead of a rifle and an axe, he totes a machete. But he lives a simple homesteading existence in the mountains.
,br> Putting jibaros aside, the national character is placid and happy, punctuated by brief spats of manic irrationality. Music is poetic and happy. Spanish is a great language to learn, as it is spoken in more countries than any other, with a simple vocabulary easily pronounced and regular grammar swiftly learned. Spanish is well suited to poetry and song, being full of round sounds and evocative homonyms. For example, vela means both a candle flame and a sail. You can see how these two meanings are poetically connected and that connection will be exploited in song. There are a million such examples. These homonyms result from a limited stock of words. A comprehensive Spanish dictionary fits in a pocketbook. So do learn Spanish if you go. Your pronunciation will be different, but what you learn will serve you in many places. If you have children, fluency will be good for them, especially if you settle some day in the Southwest. You will be required to dance happy dances if you intend to fit in, so bring your happy feet. On the flip side, it is an island of kleptomaniacs. Keep your wallet in an unexpected pocket and button that pocket. There is a solid reason why ground floor windows have wrought iron bars. There used to be gangs of urchins called titeres who roamed the street snitching everything they could lay hands on. You need to hold onto your luggage and the wife needs to hang her purse over her far shoulder.
The climate varies. My Grandpa lived in Bayamon, not far from San juan, on the Northeast. Thick, sticky, rained every afternoon. Cistern for rainwater. Seven acres planted in citronella grass to keep skeeters at bay. His dairy farm was on the opposite Southwest corner of the island in Coamo, just a hitch from Ponce. There it was steep mountains, and they had a dry season. In between, I had family in Caguas. Way up winding roads.It could get nippy in the morning. I went to boarding school in Humacao, on the east coast facing British Virgin Islands. Grassy meadows there. Vast cane fields on the west coast facing Dominica. If you are posted to a hot corner, get yourself some sea breeze. Otherwise, get a mountain hideaway.
There's a guy calls his stix Kentucky Black Gold, who has his Kentucky tobacco cured and rolled in PR; so there must be some tabacaleras there. Otherwise, it's sugar, Bacardi, and tourism.
Call to chat more if you want. (tree owe too tree fore feyve, seerow ate seero sebben) Right now, I gotta get back to work.
Keep in mind that these are the most reckless irrational breakneck incompetent drivers in this hemisphere, and proud of it. That's right, they think it's amusing, so they're proud of it. "Hijo de la ***! Idiota! ***!" waving their fist out the window ... and then they giggle. Whatever you do, don't arrange your day so that you have to criss cross busy roads. Scare you shirtless. From Guaynabo, you'd have to traverse a destruction derby to live by the water in Dorado. I used to take these jitneys that would routinely sideswipe each other and race on, both drivers hanging out their windows cursing, passenger in the front seat reaching for the steering wheel to stay out of the trees, and all the passengers in the back laughing. Morning rush hour, you'd be heading for San Juan, traffic gets heavy, the incoming flow decides to take some lanes out of the less busy outgoing side, over the divider they'd go. Reverse in the afternoon. Cars stranded atop dividers no way to get down. Going up the ramp the wrong way to exit. It's like what people say about Rome. Nope. Chillax. Stay close to where she's posted. Especially since a doctor may need to get to her hospital quickly upon occasion.
Can you teleconference with the staff there before you decide? Or can you go visit and hunt around for a week? Good excuse for a vacay anyway.
Bear in mind it's been thirty years since I was last there.
Nope. Apparently it does not.
Pen day ho. Your children will learn all these neat new Spanish cusswords. Dorado is prolly a tourist trap by now. Son of a beach. Score me a guayabera if you go.