Hi there Elnina,
Thank you for the move, I didn't realize.
Since there's just too many factors involved, I was going to send the person my Word doc once they PMed me.
My main musts are: (I've updated this since living in Panama since I would NEVER have thought to make sure these things were in place when moving)
1. Smart people. I don't mean educated, but people who at least have common sense, know how to run businesses, don't blame the customer for their mistakes, it doesn't take 3 people to done one person's job, someone is home upstairs (the lights are on), etc.
2. People who are mature & take responsibility for what they do. While many people don't take responsibility for their actions, I've come to learn that an entire country NEVER takes responsibility, nor even knows how to apologize. I believe other countries in CA are the same. Some people here do (the more educated & civilized ones), but they are the minority.
3. Civilized people - they respect others, meaning they don't try to run pedestrians off the road with their car, they don't blast their music at all hours of the night, for the most part, they are conscious that their actions affect others.
That they understand boundaries & the difference between right & wrong. Now granted everyone has their own perceptions of what is right & wrong, but I'm talking global understandings.
I don't know 100% if this is the case in other countries too, but for example if I'm standing in line, the person behind me is RIGHT IN MY SPACE. They have no sense of space here or boundaries & other expats have complained about this as well.
4. A country where they aren't partying 24/7 & if they do, it's like once or twice a year, not every weekend where the music is turned up to deafening levels.
I need peace & quiet.
I came to this country for just that & instead I'm more stressed here than I was back in Canada. Like here they let their dogs bark 24/7. Back home you get one idiot who lets his/her dog bark all night & you can either get the police involved or try to talk to your neighbor reasonably. You can even call an animal protection group.
Here none of that is possible. I have dogs barking for hours on end & it could be 3 different dogs too. I can't sleep, sometimes I can't work or even hear the person on the other end of the phone.
They abuse their dogs here by leaving them chained up outdoors 24/7. A small minority treat their dogs with respect, but the majority don't. I never EVER hated dogs before until I came to this country. There's some really vicious ones too.
5. A country where the basics we all need in order to live with are available, & they ONLY go out in times of emergencies. So that's electricity & water. I'm lucky if I get water a full straight month without it being shut down for hours on end.
Oh & NO dirty electricity. I've lost close to $2k worth of items since being here b/c of power surges, outages & dirty electricity.
6. Internet is VERY VERY important to me. It doesn't have to be the fastest on the planet, but it does have to be clean & at least 3 DL & 1-3 UL. Who knew that you could have dirty Internet.
OH & another VERY important factor. The ISP HAS to know what they are doing. If I call up, they MUST know what a ping is, what a blacklist is, etc. They also have to have no spam policies for their customers.
If the country just got Internet in the last 3-4 years, forget it. I can't take a chance.
This affects my work when I can't e-mail b/c my IP address is blocked. There's times I can't even get onto a site b/c I'm being blocked. Not to mention when the Internet is down.
7. I came here for the weather of course, but I've come to realize that wherever it is beautiful & nice, one probably has to give up on the things I mentioned above. Again there are exceptions to the rule (I hope there are), but it seems to me that in hot climates, people don't seem to be as "with it" as in colder climates. Why that is I don't know. In fact I tried to find any study where temperature affects the brain & I couldn't find anything online although I didn't look very hard.
I've even been affected since I got here.
So I certainly don't want Alaska or Russia, but I'd rather know I'm in a civilized country & deal with winters, than deal with what I've had to go thru for 2 years now.
Also there's tons of mold that I was told wasn't toxic, but I'm sure it is. And there's also a lot of rust that ruins things, so I can't have that.
If I had my dream weather, it would be around 80 degrees year round. I'll put up with 70, but 80 is more to my liking. And I don't like a lot of rain b/c of the mold.
8. Little to no pollution. I didn't find anything about pollution here in Panama, but they have it & it's HUGE.
Why?
Because they don't keep their vehicles in working order & they use toxic diesel. The stuff that comes out of buses, trucks vans & some cars is black toxic soot. I breath that in every time I have to go do errands & I am constantly ingesting chemicals from all the renovations & construction in the area. It doesn't even have to be right next door, but I smell it & it's very very toxic. They use very cheap toxic materials here. Everything is from China.
If they burn garbage in a country, I'm NOT interested. I need people who know that's VERY dangerous.
I need a country where they care about this sort of thing & aren't trying to kill one another off with their ignorance.
9. I do want to be around kind people, but again, am I going to find a country where people are nice, happy & smart? LOL That's the 64,000 dollar question LOL
10. Immigration is an issue, I have to be able to live there & I don't have tons of money to buy my way into a country.
11. Cost of living can't be through the roof expensive. I run my biz online, but since the Google fiasco, things haven't been going well.
I need a house to rent. I just learned Portugal doesn't have rentals, you can only buy (What??? LOL)
12. I'm not looking at Asia, so that's out.
13. I do want to be around nature & be close enough to a major city for shopping.
14. I do want clean produce. If the food there (meat, produce & poultry) is laden with toxic chemicals, antibiotics, the cows are fed dead animals & feces like they are fed in the US, I'm not interested. I know all countries spray chemicals on their produce, but some are more conscious of it or use very little, AND some countries have small farms where you can buy local so you aren't getting all that garbage.
15. Have to be able to ship packages in without it costing a fortune. I do buy & ship from the US regularly. And it can't be a country where the locals will steal said shipments.
16. As for language, I'm not one who picks up languages quickly. I had planned to learn Spanish when I first got here, but the owner of the school I had arranged turned out to be a blank & cancelled my application 3 days before I moved here, so I never ended up taking Spanish. I tried to find another school, but it was just so difficult (as it is with everything in this country) to find what I needed since I HAVE to have wired Internet. I can't just backpack all over the place. I work for a living & not on a laptop.
I'm not retired, so every day I have to have Internet, electricity & a stable place to work (desk, office chair, a place for all my things, etc.)
Yes the language has been a HUGE challenge for me. Why? Not b/c I don't speak it, but b/c most of the locals will lie & say they don't speak English even though they do. Or their way of handling things is to hang up on you.
I'm not saying I required people to speak English fluently, but at least enough to carry on a conversation with my Spanish & their English. If no one spoke it here, that would be one thing, but that's not the case. They learned it in school & of course there was a huge American influence here for years & still is.
So I'm not looking for a country where they have this attitude.
Yes I'm going to want to learn whatever language it is, but it will be hard for me, so I hope to find a country where a lot of people do speak English.
Before moving here I seriously thought it didn't matter if I was around expats, but now I'm realizing it sort of does. Now I know what that isolation feels like & I NEVER felt that before.
Although, I've grown to dislike expats (at least the ones in this area of Central America). As I mentioned above, I find them to be VERY VERY controlling, bullies & unless there's something in it for them, they aren't interested. There's also a lot of them that rip other newbie expats off, but that's not my concern as much as the other things. I've only ever come across 2 expats who were nice.
I'm still curious if expats are like this in other countries, or it's ONLY like this in Latin America. I had one expat tell me she stayed clear away from expats & she was in the DR.
I'm by myself, so that helps.
So in the end I didn't give out my Word doc LOL but this is a book all unto itself. Hey, you asked.
Thanks & I hope I get more responses, but I really would like people to PM me, as this is a private matter.
Hope everyone is having a nice weekend.
Michelle
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