Skip to main content

Our Quarantine So Far

The hard things:

The sleeping situations.  The king sized bed feels like a box spring with a piece of plywood on it with a 1/2 inch pad. Difficult to sleep on.  There is one stow away bed--best bed in the room, but still much to be desired.  And a 4 foot couch that Tessa sleeps on. 

We are cramped!  So much luggage, a small room with a stow away bed it feels like we're in constant clutter.  Oh, we are!



The sameness of the food day in and day out.  This hotel does have better food, but it feels the same every meal.  And they don't serve fortune cookies with it!  (Just kidding; fortune cookies are an American invention.)  But the difficulty of the food is definitely wearing emotionally on the girls.  









The testing.  Nasal or throat swabs every day.  Temperature checks twice a day.  We feel so welcomed--  look at how much they care about our health!

The good things:

We're together!  It truly is a blessing!  We thought we'd be separated for 2 weeks.  This is wonderful!

We are on the 23rd floor so we have a great view.

We brought plenty of food from home so we are not too hungry when the food seems too much.

They will give us as much water as we need.  Other hotels do not.  I'm so thankful we don't have to ration the water.  Or boil water in the tea kettle and wait for it to cool.

We brought our own bedding so we've been able to make the sleeping situations a bit more comfortable.

We have laughed a lot.  One funny thing.  At Home Evening on Monday Greta randomly picked a Primary song.  We laughed and laughed. No singing happened. (Maybe you had to be there.)

We are quite prepared for the experience.  We read about others' quarantine experiences and packed things to make it better--like a paring knife for fruit, dish soap and towel, small broom to clean up messes, clothes line etc. 

We don't have to do dishes!

Or think about what we will eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner!

We have connected with friends and family.

Tessa has early morning seminary with an online class with kids from all over China.

We've worked through all of the squabbles so far.

I'm getting better at chopsticks.

The girls have a Christmas advent calendar and mail from our ward YW group to open every day---so something to look forward to in each day of sameness!  (Many thanks to our wonderful YW!)

We're together! 

What we're doing with all of our time:

Calling friends & family

Online school

Work for Tom

Extra gospel study for me 

Yoga for me; exercise videos for everyone else

Looking out the windows and discussing everything going on

Puzzle books, coloring books

Card games

Reading

Sewing (Greta)

Painting nails

Hand washing laundry

Life is good!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

While We Are Waiting: Temples!

I love the temple.  When I first learned of the possibility of us moving to China in December 2019, one of my first questions was "How can I leave the temple?"  That question was answered in part during the closure of temples in 2020. However, when the joint venture was signed and Tom was officially offered the position in China in November 2020, I began fasting and praying that I would be able to attend the temple just once before we left.  Our original flights were for July 7, 2021 and just a few weeks before that, our temple opened up and miraculously we were able to get 2 appointments for baptisms and 4 other appointments for Tom and I before our departure date.  I can't express my deep gratitude for those 6 precious appointments.  Then when we didn't obtain a visa in time for those flights and access to nearby temples was given, I took up a new hobby.  Temple scheduling.  The girls teased me it was a bit of an obsessed hobby; but since we will go ...
2 comments
Read more

Bamboo Forest

There is a bamboo forest nearby.  A few weeks ago we paid it a visit. It was about an hour drive and after we got off the freeway it was a meandering road through some cute villages.  I started getting excited for some hiking and a lovely nature experience. I should have known better.  This is China.  If people will come, they will find a way to make some money.  The bamboo forest was no different---it was a tourist trap. That didn't mean we didn't enjoy it.  We did. It was a lot of fun.  But our expectations were shot down yet again.  (Pro tip, Darcee, drop all expectations, you're in China!) At the bamboo forest, you can see shops,  get a hot dog at "Fatty Dogg WestCoast Hot Dog",  (perhaps I should try it, my expectations may be happily surprised; but I highly doubt it) get measured 3 times,   (in China, children's prices are determined by your height, not your age.  When we came to China, both girls were under 150cm so they...
1 comment
Read more

Underarm Odor Census Notice

I just got this text message from Changzhou City. I can't quite imagine what an inspection would entail. (And to "enjoy" an inspection!) In a country where you can't buy deodorant, what would the treatment be?  I wish them well on their census efforts!
Post a Comment
Read more