The Covid-19 and Such

My last post was 6 months ago! We had just gotten out of quarantine, which is no small feat in a tiny apartment with 3 young kids. Just ask poor Ryan, who took it harder than any of us. Now he refuses to leave Hong Kong until quarantine is lifted.

Since then we've moved out of Causeway Bay. What a relief! Causeway Bay is constantly teeming with people, and while I loved the convenience to everything and proximity to Victoria Park, I'd had enough of being in all the congestion in the midst of the pandemic. Plus, I wanted a pool. 

We moved to Braemar Hill in mid-July, which is not nearly as convenient as Causeway Bay but also not nearly as crowded. I look out my window and see green! I can open the windows and not smell exhaust fumes, we have a deck, we hear birds singing, and hiking is just outside our door. And...our pool closed the day we moved in. Hong Kong had just seen a resurgence in Covid cases so they closed it and it's not to open again until pool season resumes next May.

We managed to keep ourselves busy over the summer despite closed pools and beaches. Our new place is right near some hills with rock pools, so we visited them frequently. 

And here we are on some gorgeous days at The Peak and at Tamar Park.

On the ferris wheel.

Maddy lost her top two teeth!

Ice-cream treat!

We started the year doing Zoom school, which was fun for absolutely no one. Granted, our awesome students were still happy about being together, but an online class doesn't come close to the effectiveness of a live one. And we are the lucky ones! We have Macbooks and iPads all on the same platform, and we are supported by our school's tech team. We also had two typhoon days in the middle of online learning, so Ryan and I had to teach our classes from home with our three kids in the background. 2020, will you ever end?!

This was my workspace during the 
typhoon day.

I felt my muscle tone withering and the Covid 19 packing around my middle as I taught from my computer all day. Maddy continued to be her ever-enthusiastic self. "How was Zoom school?" I asked her on the first day. "Great!" she replied. "I even liked Chinese class!" Nothing gets that girl down. 

Fortunately life is back to almost normal. All students came back to school full-time at the end of September. And while we wear masks all day and have some special rules to help with social distancing, we can't complain. Daily Covid cases are in the single digits in Hong Kong right now, and most of those are imported. But as the HK epidemiologists like to say, "Now is NOT the time to let your guard down! Together we fight the virus!" We could have 150 daily cases or 0 cases, and the message is the same. 

We are enjoying relatively normal life while it lasts, all the while anticipating a fourth wave of the virus.We even managed to take a little staycation to the Gold Coast Hotel a couple of weeks ago. 

Happy kids enjoying mock-tails (juice) on our staycation. 

Visiting the reptile house.

There was no trick-or-treating for us this year, but a couple of other moms and I managed to organise a picnic scavenger hunt for the kids on Halloween. The kids had a great time, and the parents could relax on the grass. Best Halloween ever! 

Racing to one of the ten stops on the scavenger hunt.

Superman was not happy.