I’ve worked in my classroom with my students four days in the past four weeks.
I went to Japan for winter holiday to visit one of my favorite humans who I’d not seen in a year and a half. I saw lots of face masks, didn’t touch any strangers, observed basic hygiene principles, etc.
I came back from Japan on a Saturday morning, 22 February. I rested that day, as well as Sunday. Kept things low key, because a 12-hour flight will do you in.
I went to work Monday, where lots of coworkers made jokes about my bringing back COVID-19. One of my supervisors and I joked that if I “brought it back and we have to shut down the school…”
Haha, yeah guys, that’s me, sharing is caring.
I learned after work that day that one of my students had been absent because she and her family were stopped at the border, reentering from Japan, and told to self-quarantine as a precautionary measure.
Hmm…
I went to work Tuesday, where there was suddenly discussion over the number of students who had traveled to infected countries over the holiday.
After work that day, we (the staff) got included on an email from the school letting families know that if they had traveled to an infected country over the holiday, they needed to quarantine for 14 days.
I emailed back: “What about staff?”
About three minutes later, we got another email: staff who had traveled to “highly infected” countries were required to quarantine for 14 days.
Guess where Japan was?
Right there on the highly infected list.
Oh, boy.
Immediately after, I got another email from my elementary supervisor letting me know that I couldn’t come to work… until my two weeks were up…
Two weeks, dated from my departure from Japan, put me free from quarantine a casual ten days later.
Challenge accepted!
I missed eight days of work. I wrote lesson plans every day and emailed them to my TA. I hardly moved off the couch. I received a significant number of check-in messages. And zombie memes. I took on the nickname “Corona Girl,” (given with love by my roommate) which evolved to become “Corona Cat.” I did laundry, and worked on a project I’d been too busy to devote time to.
I returned to work Monday, 9 March, where we were talking cautiously about being prepared to teach online, because school closures were beginning to happen.
Tuesday, while our students were at lunch, we learned that all Czech schools were being shut down, effective that afternoon.
Y’all. It’s been… something. A rollercoaster. A tornado. A “wild ride.” Insert whatever description you’d like. And yes, it’s been that.
It’s also been exhausting. And draining. I feel depleted. I’m trying to take the next three weeks’ worth of class and turn them into online lessons. I’m adjusting activities to be completed on a computer or device, because I have families in my class who don’t have printers at home (I don’t either, for that matter.) And trying to keep everything on a 7- and 8-year-old level.
Czech has declared a state of emergency that will last 30 days, effective tonight (Friday, 13 March). The whole country is more or less shut down. Restaurants have limited operating hours. There are no gatherings permitted larger than 30 people (save a few exceptions, like governmental, medical, etc.) Gyms, pools, clubs, galleries, libraries, theaters, festivals, performances, churches, markets – closed.
I just saw that, beginning midnight on Monday, 16 March, a “total ban” on travel from Czech will be put in place: Czechs and foreign nationals with permanent or long-term residence (that’s me) will not be allowed to leave. There doesn’t seem to be an end date yet.
Y’ALL.
*Sigh*
The trams have been eerily empty the past two days. My grocery store was still stocked the last time I went (Wednesday morning), but we’ll see what tomorrow holds.
Buckle up. This is going to be… memorable.
