Why we're here.

Many friends, family, and interested onlookers have asked us why? Why leave home for 5 months? Why the Dominican Republic? What about the kids' school? What about all the new YouTube postings you'll miss?

My wife has travelled throughout Central America and parts of South America. I've travelled throughout Upstate New York and parts of Boston, MA. When our children were born, we talked of spending time in a non-English -probably Spanish- speaking culture. One night a couple years ago Amy was online and found cheap airline tickets to the Dominican. We thought for about 5 minutes before saying "why not?" We spent 10 days in Las Terrenas, another town on the Samana Peninsula, which is the northeast corner of Hispaniola, the island on which the Dominican Republic and Haiti are located. The Samana Peninsula has historically been separated from the DR - initially because it was literally separated by a canal, and in later decades a more de facto separation, as the Dominican government has paid little attention to this region - unless a high-ranking government official was from here - until recently.

Two years ago we returned to the peninsula, again for 10 days, this time to the community of Las Galeras, on the far northeastern tip, where the road literally stops at the Atlantic Ocean. We enjoyed both these visits so much that we brought up our original idea of living in this country for a longer period of time. Five months worked for us - it was the period Amy could take as sabbatical from her job in Boston, and it allowed us to avoid a Northeastern U.S. winter. People asked us about the kids' schooling - what would we do? We planned on enrolling them in the local school for the time, and supplementing that with home schooling in subjects that they needed to keep up with - mainly math. We also felt that learning a new language and spending 5 months on a Caribbean island would qualify for a decent field trip.

Note: We are actually halfway through our stay at this point but, for reasons you will read about, the technology has not allowed me to post this blog until now. So I plan on posting it a couple days at a time, until I'm up to date.