Making the Trip

[aprild]

Beachboy,

Hi. I'm curious about this statement you made:

I hope you are coming here to buy, and not to rent? If you come here thinking you're gonna rent a place, then you really are gonna be in a hole....

What, exactly, did you mean by saying one would be in a hole if one rented? Do you mean rents are high? Or that rental houses are in bad repair? Or?



april

[Guest]

quote:

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Originally posted by KathyH

.... I do not know one "happy" local family here with no issues....

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Geez Kathy just throw us all under the bus.

I think you just haven't met enough people.

I know of plenty of Happy families. The issues they may have... I try my best to avoid there issues.

Niele is a term used for being "nosey".

I'm not sure how you know that "EVERY FAMILY HERE" has issues... But dang... Anywhere you go on this planet.... there are going to be family issues.

A lot of the problems that I hear you speak of sounds like a direct result of money problems. The economy sucks... but geez...

Do you have to throw us ALL under the bus? []

[Royall]

Maybe I'm a little too suspicious because of some of the new people that have posted in the past on Punaweb just to stir it up but "girlster328" post only once a very touchy topic and then disappears[?][?][?].... If I'm wrong about this I'm sorry[V] but it sounds fishy to me.[:0]

Royall

What goes around comes around!

[mella l]

Bingo Royall! That hit my antenna also after a while!

mella l

[missydog1]

I'm not throwing anyone under the bus. Nor am I nosey. I'm more the type of person that people choose to confide in when they're having a hard time.

I don't know enough people here, very true, and would love to know more, but it's true that many of the people whose stories I've heard had sadness to tell. Can I change that? Those are the stories that came my way.

I don't believe in succumbing to negativity.
On the other hand, sometimes I will speak up as a counterpoint to the "everything's rosy" point of view. Why? Because people having a hard time feel worse when everyone else seems to have a life full of rainbows. Like, what's wrong with them ...
They need validation that they're not alone.

It's like the "everyone gets what they give out" answer to questions about racism. The correlation to that logic is that people who experience racism somehow deserve it, because if they had given out good energy that wouldn't have happened. Well, I don't subscribe to that. There are people of all races who have innocently been subjected to racism, I'm sure.

As far as moving here to teach goes, I say YAY for that, but I want people to be realistic so they'll stay. As in "I've been teaching kids with tough problems; I understand Hawai`i has it's share of social problems; I want to bring my skills to continue the challenge." Rather than believing Hawai`i will be completely different, always supportive, and always wonderful.

Because -- I want the new teachers to stay and not make the kids sad when their teachers leave because it was not all they dreamed of here.

By the way, I've taught community college kids who came up through the worst school systems, so it's not like I don't know anything about the struggle. It's not so easy when you desperately want your student to succeed and yet they come to you with no literacy skills after graduating high school and are placed in a reading and comp class that's supposed to be university equivalent. I've been the person who inherits the accumulated failures of the system and has to try to turn it around in one semester.

I want all the best for the kids here too, but I don't necessarily believe it's bad to admit there are challenges to be overcome here.

That said, Pollyanna was one of my favorite films when I was growing up. []

ed for embarrassing typos

[Beachboy]

quote:

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Originally posted by aprild

Beachboy,

Hi. I'm curious about this statement you made:

I hope you are coming here to buy, and not to rent? If you come here thinking you're gonna rent a place, then you really are gonna be in a hole....

What, exactly, did you mean by saying one would be in a hole if one rented? Do you mean rents are high? Or that rental houses are in bad repair? Or?



april

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what I meant is this. Why come all this way, and jump through several hoops to make it all happen. For what? To pay someone elses mortgage? That's what I mean, April!

With the cost of living so high here. Why jump into the fire only to poke around for awhile? They are gonna be shocked like most of us were with their first electrical bill, let alone to price of food from the local grocery store, etc, etc. With all the high prices of things around here. One is better off paying a mortgage instead of rent.

Hey April, just my opinion...don't get all crazy on me now?!

_______________________________

“The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”

-Hunter S. Thompson

[Hotzcatz]

Financially, one hopes it is better to have a mortgage than to pay rent. Realistically, though, if folks come out from the mainland it might be better if they rented for six months to a year so they would be able to get a feel for where they might like to live. They would be able to find a neighborhood which would be suited to their personalities, lifestyle, job locations, etc. Since they are from so far away, they would be able to make a much better house buying decision if they had lived in the area for a awhile first. I'd hate to have to go to Boston (I think that's where the original poster is) and decide on where to buy a house in a place I'd never been before and do it at the same time a starting a new job.

[Kapohocat]

quote:

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Originally posted by pslamont......Just another day in P A R A D I S E !!

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I second your entire opinion. Where you live is what you make it!

And honestly, the only "real" issues I have had is newcomers who put up their noses at "locals" (mainly because I seem local until I open my mouth and my valley girl/pidgin/drawl comes out - my old boss was laughing when I told one contractor - "boy, that is kapakahi totally"! i.e mixed up).

Be real, be friendly, be respectful of cultural differences, and the island opens up to you.

(yes, KathyH I was called Pollyanna too!! Anyone want to borrow my rose colored glasses???)

[csgray]

For our first year here we lived in furnished vacation rentals (7 places in 10 months) all over Puna. It was an invaluable experience for several reasons: we experienced many different neighborhoods and got a real feel for them, we didn't have to decide what to sell and what to ship without living here, and we weren't burning our bridges. It was also relatively affordable when you consider the fact that utilities were always included and we didn't have to ship or buy household goods like pots and pans until we knew we were going to stay. If Hawaii didn't work we could have gone back to our old life. As it turned out we chose to stay because this is the right place for us, but we went back and sold or gave away almost all our "stuff". It was wrenching to sell a lifetime of memories for pennies on the dollar but most of it really wasn't suitable for our current lifestyle. I really recommend flying over with just your essentials, which in our case was clothes and computers, and rent a furnished place for at least the first few months. There are tons of furnished "vacation" rentals here and most of the owners are happy to give a good discount to someone who is staying for a month or more.

And remember that nothing worth having is easy, the low point for me was when my daughter called on my birthday to tell me that my beloved dog Ursula, who was too old to come with us, had died in her sleep that morning. I had lost a beloved family member and had no close friends here to turn to. Once we buy our own place and I get another dog I will finally feel like I truly have settled in here.

Carol

[Easygoing]

CSGray, I see you did not arrive with a dog, but those that come with a large dog or two will have a tough time finding any sort of rental. Who could stand to get rid of a best friend though.