Isolation Week Two

It is hard to believe that so much has changed in last week! My flatmates have joined me in working from home and we have been in lockdown for almost a week now. I know that NZ has just entered the same phase and everyone is working out how to do life under the new circumstances. We have been doing all right so far, though staying positive through the devastating news headlines can be very difficult. It is hard to imagine keeping deaths below 20,000 as being a success, but that is what the UK government is hoping for at the moment.

I have had a whole week of online teaching and things have gone reasonably smoothly. Our languages department has split the workload so I am in charge of lessons for our mid and top set year 8 German classes. This means I only have to put together two lessons a week, and a lesson for my year 7 PSE class. I've found the sudden reduction in planning hard to get my head around and working out other useful things to stay occupied hasn't been easy. We are still emailing our timetabled classes each day with encouraging messages and links to that day's work and then fielding all the emails from students. My main job seems to have suddenly become IT support! We will be looking at adding more work and work that can be marked after the Easter holiday but for now, we are trying not to overwhelm ourselves or our students and their parents.

I had a lovely conversation with my principal during the week because I did have a stressful couple of days trying to decide if I should just get on a plane and fly back to NZ. My main concern has been getting to September and no longer having a job (finding a new job at the moment is basically impossible), and there being no flights back at that stage. I would then be stranded in the UK with no income - not an ideal situation. I conveyed these concerns to the school and they have said they will guarantee me work until at least Christmas to ensure I don't end up in that situation. They would very much like to keep me permanently but visas are even more up in the air than they were a couple of weeks ago. We will just have to see how things pan out, but that reassurance of work has certainly lifted a weight off my shoulders.

Lunch in the garden

Pancakes!

In the flat, we have been trying to have lunch breaks together and go out into the garden or out for a short walk on the downs at the end of the street. We have also been doing Kahoot quizzes together, watching films, playing board games, and this morning we had pancakes all together. After a week of sunshine (yay!) there was great excitement today because we have had snow showers coming through!

I have also enjoyed being connected to my church family (Emmaus Rd) through services streamed live on a Sunday morning, doing small group via Zoom, and getting to meet some new people through a dinner party on Zoom. The church is also launching a Love Your Neighbour initiative where people can volunteer to pray, help out with grocery shops, ring and talk to people who may need encouraging, and practical help with homeschooling/budgeting/grief counselling etc. This will hopefully help our wider community as well as those within the church.

In the midst of all the negativity it has been encouraging to see communities coming together to support one another, not just in our area, but in the wider country and world as well. We all went out to our front garden to clap for the NHS on Thursday night with the rest of the UK and I think it is important to find these positive moments whenever we can.

All my thoughts and prayers are with you all, wherever you are hunkered down to weather this storm!