This as-told-to essay is based on conversations with Charity Kreher, 34, a project manager who moved from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to San Juan, Puerto Rico, in November 2024 with her husband and two young children. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
My husband had a job opportunity in Puerto Rico, and we thought it was a cool opportunity to dive into a totally different culture.
We started out in Missouri and moved to Virginia for work and lived there for eight years. Then we moved to Oklahoma and lived there for five years.
We were like, “If we don’t do it, would we be kicking ourselves for not getting out of our comfort zone?” We’d be showing our kids that it’s OK to get out of their comfort zone — as long as you have some things in place.
It worked out with my husband’s job to just do a full-on relocation, and my job allowed me a remote opportunity.
Before we moved here, I had never visited Puerto Rico. So when we landed in November, it was the first time I’d ever seen it — besides my husband FaceTiming me when he came down earlier in 2024 for all of his interviews.
Puerto Rico’s diverse outdoor activities made us more active as a family
Oklahoma was extremely affordable and we had a very nice house and a very nice community. But there wasn’t an outdoor aspect to be able to enjoy.
We had a 3,500-square-foot house, and we downsized to a 1,500-square-foot apartment. We’re in an oceanfront high-rise building. It’s a three-bed, two-bath, and it’s $6,500 a month.
We’re finding that we can do without as much space, and that’s OK. And the goal isn’t to be in our apartment as much. We’re able to get out and enjoy different areas and maybe we don’t need as much space or stuff as we thought.
We’re finding ourselves enjoying being outside more — we use more sunscreen, but we’re not trying to just keep the kids occupied by going to some park. We’re enjoying the beaches, the different trails, and the different scenery.
Oklahoma was pretty, too — they call it the green country, with the rolling hills and some lakes — but the beaches are really cool down here.
My husband and I like to stay active. We play pickleball two times a week at some of the local courts, and then they do beach tennis on the beaches in Ocean Park or on the Carolina side. You can do beach tennis easily on the weekends — that was a new sport we hadn’t heard of, but it’s really fun.
We’re getting into running, so there are a ton of 5Ks and 10Ks, and people here take it seriously. On Saturdays and Sundays, this road that we live on is pretty dead in the mornings, so there are a ton of runners out between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. It’s this huge community, and you start seeing the same people every weekend. So we’ve found ourselves being really active.
Our kids’ school transition has been a breeze thanks to the welcoming community
Where we were living in Oklahoma, we were quite a ways from the school. My kids were taking the school bus, or we were doing drop-off at day care.
Here, we decided to live in the city, just a couple of blocks down from the school that we chose. So it’s been a really unique experience just being able to walk my kids to and from school.
And the afterschool activities are ones that I wouldn’t have found Stateside when it comes to the music- or the culture-based classes, like Spanish in the school. Hopefully they’ll end up bilingual.
I had heard that everybody was going to be friendly and inviting and whatnot, but I don’t even think people were this friendly in Oklahoma.
Everything on the island is based around WhatsApp, so there are all these chats. Even if you’re new, people are reaching out and trying to build connections and are sharing things like school uniforms. It didn’t take us long to feel comfortable in a new school.
What’s crazy down here is it’s not just the local Puerto Rican people that we’re able to meet at the schools. We’re meeting people from all over the world.
Right now, our daughter has classmates who have come from China, New Zealand, and some who have also transplanted from the States. It’s just this whole melting pot that I really didn’t know we would find, from a community perspective, with the school.
Puerto Rico is more expensive than I expected and we’re getting used to the frequent power outages
You can find the cheap vendors and some cheap restaurants, but the cost of food is not super cheap, which I was surprised by.
We’re easily spending $75 to $100 for a family of four with two kids — and my kids don’t eat that much. And we’re not getting super fine dining; that might be a burger and fries. So I wasn’t super impressed with the cost of food here.
I wouldn’t say the cost of groceries is insane. We have Costco just like in the States, so you can get discounted prices if you shop there. There are supermarkets everywhere, but there are some items that I know we don’t get down here. We had the egg shortage, and we’re still having the egg shortage, so you really have to be picky.
Another con is the utilities. The last time we were at church, the power went out halfway through the sermon, and they didn’t have a generator.
Our apartment building has a generator and a cistern, so we’re fine. But our friends who live a couple of blocks from us have been without water, so the city’s been having to deliver potable water.
You wouldn’t believe how frequently the stoplights go out and how we all just know how to handle it. Whereas in Tulsa, if a stoplight went out, people would be posting on Facebook saying, “Be careful!” Here, it’s just every other day, and you just work your way through it.
The utilities, in general, are struggling, but you just have to learn to adapt to it. Keeping bottles of water on hand and having a cistern or finding a place to live that has that was a priority for us. So was finding a building with a generator so that if we went without power, it wouldn’t impact my work, because that was kind of the deal.
My family was so worried when we said we were going to move because we didn’t really know as much about the island as we probably should have. When you hear “island,” you might think second- or third-world country, but honestly, they’re all living life basically the same way that we are in the States.
Organized sports, happy hours — it’s not different at all. Some things are different, but you’re not left wanting, like maybe some folks would imagine.
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