My mom and sister came for an AMAZING TET trip which included everything from motorbike tours, Cu Chi Tunnel tours, epic monkey battles, private island sitting, amazing food, street art tours, comedy shows, lots of laughs and so much more!
However, Coronavirus became a real thing during their trip here and I am not sure people who aren’t in Asia understand what it’s been like here. We first heard about it right as they were landing in Saigon. When we got back to Hanoi, I bought a box of 40 masks on a whim. These came in handy later.
However, we didn’t really think about this as a serious thing. And, yes, we were much more aware of any Chinese tourists. Partly because everywhere we went asked where we had been. When we didn’t say China, they would take off their masks and tell us about the last cruise ship of Chinese tourists that had arrived. Because at this point, it was only in China. And, people were scared.
The last night before Denise was to fly back, we were sitting in our hotel in Kuala Lumpur (KL), Leslie got word that her school was closing. This was a Saturday night. Thus began a frantic bit of texting to people we worked with trying to figure out what was going on. We heard flights from Taiwan were being grounded. We confirmed Denise’ flight was ok and she should be able to fly back to the US through Taiwan. Which she did. However, she was asked to self-quarantine for a bit before returning to work. Because to so many people in the US, China is Asia.
My school then closed for a week. The ONE WEEK that my mom was going to be able to be here when I was in school. She was going to come meet my kids. See my classroom, read to my kids! Meet my kids from last year that still think she is a unicorn. We had planned so perfectly.
Then mom left with no issues. And, we have been out of school since she left. We are starting week 6. WEEK 6 of no school. Well, no in-person school. We have been doing online learning and parent pick-up packets of homework and activities.
And, let me tell you, the mental toll this is taking on people is crazy. Imagine going to work every day at a school where there are no children. Everything is covered in plastic in your room because the government keeps coming to spray the school with a disinfectant. And, every week you think it has to be the last week. But, then, the weekend rolls around and something else happens and you are closed. Again. For another week.
Our Spring Break (along with many other international schools) has been moved up a few weeks to next week. This is for many reasons but one being that it was already planned time off so then we don’t lose those school days.
So, how do you do online learning for 4 year olds? Well, we have been filming short lesson videos for our kids and sending home worksheets or activities for them to do after they watch the lesson. But, I’m so tired of the same old video. Most of our videos go something like this:
In my classroom, if we have had too many lessons in a row and they are getting squirrely we pull up the Shake Break song and shake out our energy before we sit down to continue our lessons. I got a lot of the teachers, my mom and my friend Samantha to film themselves dancing to the video so I could send out a video just to my class with their very own Shake Break video. This is where we are at. This is how we are all entertaining ourselves.
Some of our other teachers have gotten extremely creative and made up their own hand washing dance. It makes me laugh every time.
Since this virus is moving around the world and it seems to be impacting things in the US now as well (South by Southwest is now cancelled, friends have told me their work trips are grounded til April, there is a school closed in Chicago because a teacher tested positive…) please try to keep a positive outlook. The virus isn’t what scares me, necessarily, it’s the idol minds and boredom that ensues when your life can’t go back to normal.