Now that I am done with my pan amasado I can work on the original post I was going to write today. After the group blog we had on What Drives Us To or From Chile some people have written why they won't or why they will stay in Chile so I decided to write on why I would stay in Cincinnati.
I was out with some co-workers this week and one person who I had not seen for a while said "You know, I am really liking Cincinnati". He is from the Pacific North-West and he used to complain about Cincinnati. He planned on being here 2 years and leaving but he told us that he is now happy here and wants to stay. My saying about Cincinnati is that there is not a lot of really really good but there is not a lot of really really bad and you can find a little bit of just about everything. It may not be the best of those things- but you can find it. For example, Seabass and I found a Capoeira class here. There is just one group but it is an actual instructor from Brazil who is good.
If Cincinnati were any smaller I would have a problem with it but all in all it's not bad. Cincinnati has Broadway Shows, a Symphony, an Opera, Ballet, a Choir, Contemporary Art Muesum, Natural History Museum, Children's Museum, the National Underground Freedom Center Museum, Aquarium, Zoo, a large Amusement Park, indoor and outdoor Water Parks, a River, many county parks, skiing (not Aspen Colorado by any stretch of the mind but it's still skiing with ski lifts), many great universities, NFL team, NLB team, professional hockey team, ATP Tennis Masters Series, 3 professional soccer teams, a Horse Track, 10 Fortune 500 companies (In fact, Cincinnati has more such companies - 4.85 per million population - than New York (4.48), Chicago (3.04) and Los Angeles (1.68)), and the list goes on. It does not compare to New York, Chicago, or LA but it is also a lot more economical and a lot less to deal with as far as crime, traffic, or population. One of the differences with Cincinnati is that there aren't a lot of people who live downtown in the heart of the city. There is an underpriviledged population that lives in or on the outskirts of the city and there are many projects going on right now trying to create more upscale living and lifestyle but it hasn't changed yet. Most everyone (like us) live in suburbs of the city and a car is a requirement.
Seabass commented when he was here for the first time that he really enjoyed the pace. You work and you have a family life too. We really enjoy that. Living is very economical which allows us to indulge and also be able to travel (which we do and are planning to do a lot of). This will also enable us to have a second home in Chile (on the beach is the plan). We would much rather vacation in Chile than vacation in Cincinnati (where my family is). Also, with having a child it makes a HUGE difference to be near family. All in all while Cincinnati is not the perfect place we do enjoy it and plan on calling this "home". Perhaps later on in life this will change but for now we are happy.
Even when I'm harsh about Cincinnati there is always something that reminds me that it's not that bad. When we returned from Chile a few weeks ago I was kind of down on Cincinnati since I love the food and scenery so much in Chile and I was imagining my life there. S and I were sitting in a restaurant here waiting for our food and heard a guy talking on his cellphone in Spanish. My husband is pretty good at quickly determining where someone is from based on their Spanish accent. He told me the guy was Chilean and a few minutes later we started hearing "Si Poh, and Ahhh Yeaaaa" so there was no denying it. After the guy hung up and as we were leaving we stopped by to say hello to him and his family. There are in general very few Chileans in the US, only a handful in Ohio or Cincinnati and none that we knew of in our suburb. It turns out that he was from Concepcion and his wife from Santiago and they moved from Chile to Miami 20 years ago. They visited our suburb 3 years ago and fell in love with it. He said it was "paradise" here. GO FIGURE!(Note: He did say that he had not been to Chile in over 20 years and it has evolved so his point of reference is a little old). This was a reminder that it's all about perspective and no matter where you are you can usually find the good if you look hard enough.
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"You work and you have a family life too. "
ReplyDeleteI think that's one of my biggest problems with long term life in Chile. A. Santiago is so huge that to get to work it's an hour commute there and an hour back for most people...at least, so that's a wasted 12 hours a week spent on transportation alone. And B. The work hours here are horrendous in most professions so you can't have a family life. It's rough.