At the beginning of April we had "spring break". As a school we voted for one week instead of two, and that second week off has been used to end school a week earlier than previously planned. Even though we didn't have anywhere to go, it was nice to have a week off. Vivian has really been wanting me to teach her some U.S. history, so I offered a lesson a day for any students who were interested for the week of break. We started with U.S. geography, which Vivian and Elena both enjoyed.
Having a week off also meant I had time for some cooking experiments. Jeff had gotten us bags of cookie mix, so I added the necessary liquids and we had cookies.
Lots of people have been posting pictures of all the puzzles they're completing during this lockdown time, so we got out our Sleeping Beauty puzzle from last summer to see if we could make more progress.
We started strong.
Then we got to here and that was about it.
The girls did keep busy though.
We even had a dinner dancing show one night.
The end of spring break was Easter, and that was tough. It was the day we were supposed to be getting on our cruise with our friends. It was supposed to be a day off for me when someone else would worry about children's activities and what's for dinner. Instead, we were stuck at home with no jelly beans or other special Easter food, and I just didn't have it in me to try and come up with something special. Luckily, my family is pretty flexible. The girls were perfectly happy with chicken nuggets and watching Buffy. We had gotten all the way to Season 7, and it seemed appropriate Easter viewing, since she sacrificed herself twice to save humanity only to be resurrected.
Luckily, we have friends who still had the Easter spirit in them, and they dropped off some baby chick cupcakes, which Elena devoured.
The next week, it was back to our "normal" online classes. The school director knew how sad I was to be separated from my classroom and my books, and since I hadn't had a chance to get things before everything shut down, he video called me from my classroom to help me get a few essential items, and then he sent them to me via Rappi, along with a sweet note for the girls. I viewed it as a birthday present, because that Thursday was my lockdown birthday.
As an actual birthday present, Jeff worked on sourcing ingredients for a cosmopolitan, no mean feat with alcohol restrictions in place as well, but he did it!
The result was delicious, so went out on the balcony for drinks.
It was a gray day, and I felt the symbolism of the balcony bars, but we video called friends to have drinks with them, and it ended up being a lot of fun.
Of course, my kid with the sweet tooth kept asking when we were having the cupcakes.
We had ordered a nice restaurant dinner from Rappi, and when we were all done I got my cupcake with a candle and singing.
We burned off the calories with a Queen dance party.
Vivian threw a dance party of her own the next day when I let her get an Instagram account.
One of my friends who I had been catching up with on my birthday said that her daughter had an account, and her daughter is Vivi's oldest friend, so Viv leveraged that to get a way to talk to her. To her credit, she was obsessed for a week or so, but has now settled down about it. We had been having fun with Myers-Briggs personality tests, and we confirmed Vivi's extroverted nature.
This was also about the time that the president announced the extension of the lockdown, so I figured my extrovert needed as many opportunities for social connection as possible.
Although I am not an extrovert (INFJ for the record), the announcement hit me hard. Sometimes, even when you know something is coming, it can still be a shock. We'd also been doing the lockdown, online learning/teaching combo for over a month at that point, and if I thought it was wearing on me at the beginning, I am now officially worn out. Keeping my family and my students on track is giving me purpose, but in my heart, all I want to do is go home to the U.S., find a quiet corner in my house which our tenants just moved out of yesterday, and read books.
Jeff is trying to keep me in one piece. He found a new yummy middle eastern restaurant to order from.
And despite my children's general insanity, they do give me moments of joy, like the other day when they were both sitting outside on a sunny day reading books.
Elena is pretty much refusing to do any of the assigned online learning at this point, but she's reading chapter books for fun, so I'm not too worried about her.
The school organized a couple online quizzes, one for teachers and one for families, so we participated and had a lot of fun with it.
The teacher one was a bring your own beverage event, so Jeff got us all set up.
One thing that has been keeping me happy busy is working on the kitchen remodel for our house in the U.S.. It's been fun picking cabinets and countertops and dreaming of my new kitchen. Of course, it makes me want to go home even more, but I know it's not going to be done until June at the earliest, so I'm trying to be patient. I even wrestled with my tiny oven here that can't heat up in under 30 minutes and can't hold a consistent temperature for more than 5 minutes in order to make a quiche which turned out quite nicely.
As always, humor is a help. Yesterday one of my friends posted a series of mock children's book covers on Facebook. They were all good, but these were my two favorites.
I'm working on being optimistic that we will be able to pack out in June and go home with all our obligations to Colombia fulfilled. It's another month and a half, which really isn't too bad. We'll see how things go and what I'll be writing about a month from now.
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