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- When I was offered a dream job, I moved my family from the mainland US to Puerto Rico in 2015.
- On the island, we sometimes had no running water, struggled to get around, and items were costly.
- Though we struggled to adapt, we loved island life and didn’t regret the move.
In 2015, I moved my family of four from Pennsylvania to Puerto Rico to pursue my dream job. Although I had lived on the island when I was young and vacationed there, I had never worked professionally or lived there as an adult.
When I accepted the job as a service manager at a MedTech company, I fell in love with the idea of warm weather and being near the beach year-round. Plus, the job offered me international experience, which I was looking for.
The thought of living, working, and maybe even retiring in Puerto Rico motivated me the most. But the reality of the island life wasn’t what I expected.
A struggling economy made daily life costly
During one of my first days, an employee quipped, “I was wondering if you knew what was going on on the island. Everyone is leaving, but you took a job here.”
I was unaware that people were leaving the island for the US mainland for better job opportunities. The decline was due to a struggling economy and a rising unemployment rate.
Since my company paid for everything at first — including food while we were in a hotel — I didn’t notice how expensive everyday items were. That was until I had to pay for them out of my own pocket.
Workplace norms were different on the island
Having worked most of my career on the US mainland, I was used to living life on a strict schedule. Meetings started when they were meant to and ended at the appropriate time.
But there was a more lax culture around timeliness at my new job. Meetings that didn’t start or end on time were almost a daily work frustration.
On several occasions, trying to impose my US-bred management style, I would call an employee who was late to a meeting but was unable to reach them, only for them to walk in 15 minutes late with Starbucks in their hands.
Water shortage was a harsh reality
When my family and I moved into our rented home in Cataño, we were surprised to find that there was no running water.
Puerto Rico was in a drought for the first time in almost two decades. Water was rationed, and we had to store it for the days when the water was turned off.
I was used to having access to water when I needed it on the mainland, so it was a struggle for my family to adapt. In the US, we never had the local water department ration water because of a drought.
Getting around the island was a challenge
I often drove around the island. For a distance that would typically take me an hour in the US, even with some traffic, in Puerto Rico, it took 30 to 45 minutes longer.
Driving on the island highway system was nothing like my normal drive on the I-76 in Pennsylvania, which stretches from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The only thing that would stop me in Pennsylvania was the need to get gas — not a traffic light in a small town in the middle of the interstate.
In the US, I was used to highways that were clearly marked with white lines. That was not always the case in Puerto Rico.
Also, traffic norms are not the same. In Puerto Rico, it’s common for drivers to stop at a red light, look both ways and then just keep going. On one occasion, as I waited at a red light with my family, another driver behind me got out of his car to tell me to run the red light. When I refused, he simply drove around me.
Puerto Rico is still a paradise to enjoy
Despite my challenges living in Puerto Rico, we enjoyed the warm weather, beaches, sightseeing, and food.
We took the ferry from Cataño across the bay to Old San Juan to go sightseeing. As a family, we went to the beach on Isla Verde, which was only 30 minutes away from us and one of the most beautiful beaches on the island. Going a little further down from Isla Verde beach, we often stopped at the kiosks on the side of the highway to buy many of the island’s popular food dishes.
After just over a year, we eventually returned to the mainland when I landed another job. My time in Puerto Rico was memorable, and I do not regret it.
But if I had to do it all over again, I would research the island more to ensure I was ready for the move and better plan to adjust to the difference between living on an island and the US mainland. I wrongly assumed that since Puerto Rico is part of the US, the infrastructure and the ways of living would be the same, but that was not the case.
