Adventures Abroad: School of Nature...and Quarantine

Our family just returned from 3+ months in California. I originally left to escape the virus in Asia only to find out later it was already circulating in the USA for months. Ryan was more fearful of being trapped in our apartment for months than he was of the virus. Regardless of the reason, we couldn't have found a better place to hole up and social distance: Ryan's mom and step-dad's house in the Central Coast of California.

Our daily schedule went like this:

One of Maddy's assignments for school was to
make a schedule of her day. I love that our
morning family cuddle made it onto the schedule.

What Maddy does not have on her schedule is that after the kids went to bed, Ryan and I worked teaching live classes to our students in Hong Kong until the middle of the night. Fun! For no one.

Like all working parents these days, finding a balance between distance learning, our work (distance teaching), and taking care of the kids was challenging. Luckily we had some grandparents at the ready. Ryan's mom is a beast in the kitchen and whipped up some amazing meals while laughing at our kids' crazy sayings and antics. Grandpa Joe put the kids to bed like a boss. Literally, he was the boss - no getting out of bed for sneaky bathroom trips when he was in charge.

We were lucky that the population density and number of Covid cases in San Luis Obispo County is low so most trails and beaches stayed open. We took full advantage of School of Nature and had our kids out almost every day enjoying the outdoors. Here are some of our highlights:

Maddy will climb any rock she sees.

Some reluctant hikers.

Treat time!

We escaped for a couple of hours on a mini-date.

We also celebrated Easter in California, a first for the kids!

Dyeing eggs.

I wasn't supposed to dye my lips?

The saddest boy to ever eat a Rice Krispy treat.

Since local cases have been close to none in Hong Kong for several weeks, schools are reopening. Our travels back were very different than our usual experience travelling across the Pacific. First, the only direct flight to Hong Kong we could find was on Cathay Pacific, and it only left twice a week from LA. So we drove down to LA and took a 15-hour flight back to our city. Wow, that sounds terrible, you might be thinking. Don't worry, it gets worse.

The PJ Masks had to say good-bye.

Upon arrival at Hong Kong International Airport, we immediately got into a line filling out health paperwork. Luckily, one of the staff took mercy on our family of 5 and brought us to the front of the line, saving us at least an hour of waiting. After Ryan and I got our wrist trackers (mercifully, kids don't need to wear them) we boarded a bus to the Asia World Expo Center and waited a half hour to take our saliva test. It was at this point that Owen decided to totally lose it. He was so tired that he cried non-stop for at least a half hour in my arms until he passed out. We were in a huge hall so his already very loud wailing was amplified, much to the dismay of our fellow passengers. Ryan said that he cried more in that Expo Center than he's cried collectively in 2.5 years.

After we submitted our saliva samples we moved to another room in the Expo Center, where we were assigned a small table and several chairs. The staff gave us some sandwiches and water.

"How long will the results take?" I asked.

"Oh, you know, a couple of hours," the staffer replied.

No, it did not take a couple of hours. Six hours later they called our number and...Maddy and I tested negative for the virus.

"What about me?" asked Ryan. Side note: the boys were too young to give saliva samples so they were to give stool samples whenever we returned home.

"Oh, you? Yeah, your results aren't in yet. It will be at least another hour."

"What?" Ryan said. "We all gave our samples at the same time. I have two 3-year-olds that are starving and exhausted!"

This also happened to another family with young kids, but fortunately they called over to the lab and got our results in another ten minutes.

We spent 6 hours in this room.

So we landed at 6:30am and were in the car on the way home at 5pm. Now we are on Day 9 of our 14 day home quarantine. Honestly, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. The kids are rediscovering their toys and Ryan and I are cleaning and reorganising like we have nothing else going on...oh wait, we don't have anything else going on except work. Our helpers come by every day with fresh groceries and several friends have come by with food, flowers, and beverages.

We will be happy to get outside despite the summer heat next Friday. Here we are keeping ourselves busy during quarantine: