Racconto YEG

Natalie doesn’t mind e-learning so far. Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons Natalie has google meets with her class where her teacher checks in on them—Tuesday’s are whole class meets and Thursdays are small group meets. I think the meets really help to build and maintain the relationship started in the classroom but would be super hard to build new relationships within if there wasn’t stuff to build from in the beginning. 

Things here at home feels ok with the kids--they are settled into a Spring Break kind of vibe, trying to not sleep in too late, to eat regularly scheduled meals and to find ways to keep busy at home (video games, painting, board games, etc) But these are early days and, to be honest, as a person who was alone 90% of the time during the days for almost a year, things feel surreal with everyone home 100% of the time right now. There is a lot of anxiety around the totally unknown factors of this virus and even knowing if we are successfully "flattening the curve". Things change so quickly by the hour that each day feels like a year's worth of news. That said, I am appreciative of the supportive communities around me--the gym 's online St Paddy's day get together, the Sexual Assault Centre's outreach through video conferencing our therapy sessions--have proven invaluable to making sure that the feelings of deep isolation and loneliness is stymied at lea...

The most startling for the kids has been the closure of schools--potentially for the remainder of the school year! In an effort to maintain social distancing and to ensure kids dont become exposed to covid 19 in casual contact, the very difficult decision was made to close all k-12 schools, post secondaries, and daycare centres beginning immediately. What does it mean? Apparently the schools are trying hard to put learning online for students to complete their curriculum but students are all to be passed forward to the next grade and all grade 12 students who were on track for graduation would still graduate.  It is a shock to the system, late on a Sunday afternoon, to receive this information and we went out of a last restaurant dinner before it became unavailable to us. The kids were a mix of gladness for extra time off to complete annoyance that this was how school was going to end for the year. We will see what the daily grind looks like from here on out.

As the news continues to pile up, there is a lot of discussion of this idea of "flattening the curve" and how we need to be socially responsible on a large scale for the interventions to be effective for everyone, so as not to overwhelm the health care system. If I thought people were panic-buying before, it has reached new levels--grocery stores have bare shelves--bread, pasta, sauce, rice, soup, and of course, toilet paper, Even milk aisles have a pittance left. It is weird because the supply chains are not interrupted and stock is still coming in, but I suppose the notion of quarantine and shelter in place makes people nervous.

Two days later, March 11, everything has begun to escalate, with the Alberta government advising all Albertans to cancel travel internationally and to begin to warn people of the risk factors for covid19--symptoms ranging from fevers, cough, difficulty breathing, headaches and to ask people to be aware of passing it on to high risk groups (seniors over 70 and those with immunocompromised systems). New words started to permeate our conversations: social distancing, quarantine, self-isolation. Social gatherings of more than 250 people or more requested, then demanded, to shut down. It was so odd to see, in real time, the shutdown of the NBA, the NHL, major league baseball. The markets start tanking as the economy takes hit after hit--large scale layoffs begin to be apparent. We were holding out for the Government of Canada but today it happened: no non-essential travel internationally. Our trip to Mexico officially cancelled because what if we werent even able to make it back home?...

We had begun hearing about the novel coronavirus out of Wuhan, China sometime in December, or early January. It felt remote and only vaguely unsettling since it was happening on the other side of the world. Of course, we were concerned about this new virus and how quickly it seemed to overtake the population there and how vigorously it was quarantined by the regimental government. But it wasn't anywhere close to mind. Eventually it began to spread outside of the bounds of Wuhan, making it's way via travellers to other Asian countries (Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, etc) and becoming more frightening with the climb of infected and dying people. But it still wasn't top of mind. March began with cheer and countdowns to vacation. As soon as the first case appeared in Edmonton on March 6th, things began to shift noticeably. When the spread began to effect countries such as Italy and Spain, the numbers took on a more pallid hue, and governments here began to pay closer atte...