There. That's the post. I can't go into more detail, because the details are all tangled up like a pile of coat hangers: if I pull one out to include, I just have to include a couple more to support it, and those sort of need more background to make sense of. Next thing I know, we're talking about the Japanese occupation of Korea, my job, which has changed a lot in the last year, and Busan Waldorf School, where my kids currently aren't going to school.
Nevermind. It's all in my head. I just don't want to go into it because my brain is getting used up on other stuff. I started writing this update a few days ago, and found that it was a page and a half about my job. So I retitled it, set it aside, and started this post. It's Sunday, April 5th as I start this, and I plan to publish this week. Preferably early this week, so I can use it to procrastinate for work that needs to be done by Thursday.
Nevermind. It's all in my head. I just don't want to go into it because my brain is getting used up on other stuff. I started writing this update a few days ago, and found that it was a page and a half about my job. So I retitled it, set it aside, and started this post. It's Sunday, April 5th as I start this, and I plan to publish this week. Preferably early this week, so I can use it to procrastinate for work that needs to be done by Thursday.
All right, enough culture talk. This is twice now that I have started a post about my family and dodged the issue. It's now it's April 11th, and there are two more posts in the queue and this one has been reduced to half a page.
Winter vacation is always an interesting time for us: Horyon usually has about two weeks of actual vacation, during which we try to go out of town for some kind of trip. The rest of her vacation is taken up by "vacation classes," which I could have sworn I had written about previously on the Roblog, but a brief search revealed nothing, and an intense search felt like more procrastination than I was ready to commit to. I am leaving this coat hanger in the closet. Even with vacation classes, Horyon has more time at home than usual. The kids have about 6 weeks off, and I have more than two months. By the end of vacation time we are all ready to go back to our normal lives. There is protesting on all fronts, but it is clear that everyone wants to be back in their respective schools.
This past vacation was no different. We drove to a big, famous amusement park called Everland south of Seoul. This was early February: the Coronavirus was starting to come into public view, so people were wearing masks and it was hard to buy hand sanitizer. There was no government directive to avoid crowded places, but people were starting to do that on their own. And the temperatures were wintery: below freezing at night, snow on the ground. Hat and gloves cold. There were not many people there, so we could go on most of the rides without waiting long. When Everland is running full steam you wait an hour or two for most rides, and they sell an add-on package that lets you go to the VIP line. Not necessary in February. Of course, the water-based rides were closed, and the wooden roller coaster was as well. I was very disappointed with that. But we had a
This year the kids had a week of school, then we went on COVID19 lockdown. At first the kids were happy, "Yay! More vacation!" That lasted about a week*, which was about a week longer than it lasted for Horyon and me. Then we started hearing, "I want to go back to school," and "I miss my friends," and "My soul is starving in this wretched isolation."
* This is a sort of average. Maxine figured out that this was bad news within a few days. Quinten took longer.
By now I'm pretty sure you all understand this reality. You are either under some sort of lockdown, or reading this in the future, trying to figure out how exactly our species was wiped out.* But we started in early March, so we've been doing it longer.
*I know, my optimism is amusing.
The country as a whole has done well, but we've had some minor scares along the way: Horyon has had low-grade fevers (under 100 degrees F), enough that her school nurse made her go to the hospital to get tested. Twice. Both came back negative, both within 12 hours from hospitals designated for testing. Early on she had a week or so of a bad cold or flu, with a real fever. She slept in a separate room for a couple of weeks, just to be safe.
Maxine was also sick for a while with the same flu Horyon had. So along with our family being isolated from everyone else, we were isolating ourselves from each other. Horyon and Maxine were pretty much worthless for about a week. Maxine's been doing dishes the past few months, so we really missed that, and when Mommy goes down for the count, everything slows way down.
So now it's April 19th. I am determined to publish this soon, but that has been the case for two weeks.
The kids are going back to school. Just once or twice a week, with classes divided so that only five students at a time are there. Our school is a Waldorf school, so they don't have kids doing computer literacy until 10th grade (next year for Maxine). Even then, they have a ground-up approach, starting with how computers are made and work, the basics of programing and communication, and touching on the Internet right at the end. Before that, they don't want students to get on the Internet at all.
I refuse to stick slavishly to these guidelines, but my kids do get a lot less screen time than most, and it's a win most of the time. I miss being able to discuss much pop culture with them, but they are still pretty fun to talk to. Which is all beside the point. The point being that my kids don't do online school time. They go to school a couple of times a week, with just four other kids from their class at a time. They get homework to do, but it's not normal by most standards. Quinten's includes things exercising (take the eight flights of stairs to our apartment eight times a day), growing bean plants from dried beans, and copying a huge amount of text into his notebook. Maxine is at a strange in-between stage, without a regular teacher, so she doesn't have homework per se. Her class is going to do self-directed projects, but they are still working on how that will look.
And now it is April 20th, more than two weeks since I started. I'm going to leave you with just one photo:
By now I'm pretty sure you all understand this reality. You are either under some sort of lockdown, or reading this in the future, trying to figure out how exactly our species was wiped out.* But we started in early March, so we've been doing it longer.
*I know, my optimism is amusing.
The country as a whole has done well, but we've had some minor scares along the way: Horyon has had low-grade fevers (under 100 degrees F), enough that her school nurse made her go to the hospital to get tested. Twice. Both came back negative, both within 12 hours from hospitals designated for testing. Early on she had a week or so of a bad cold or flu, with a real fever. She slept in a separate room for a couple of weeks, just to be safe.
Maxine was also sick for a while with the same flu Horyon had. So along with our family being isolated from everyone else, we were isolating ourselves from each other. Horyon and Maxine were pretty much worthless for about a week. Maxine's been doing dishes the past few months, so we really missed that, and when Mommy goes down for the count, everything slows way down.
So now it's April 19th. I am determined to publish this soon, but that has been the case for two weeks.
The kids are going back to school. Just once or twice a week, with classes divided so that only five students at a time are there. Our school is a Waldorf school, so they don't have kids doing computer literacy until 10th grade (next year for Maxine). Even then, they have a ground-up approach, starting with how computers are made and work, the basics of programing and communication, and touching on the Internet right at the end. Before that, they don't want students to get on the Internet at all.
I refuse to stick slavishly to these guidelines, but my kids do get a lot less screen time than most, and it's a win most of the time. I miss being able to discuss much pop culture with them, but they are still pretty fun to talk to. Which is all beside the point. The point being that my kids don't do online school time. They go to school a couple of times a week, with just four other kids from their class at a time. They get homework to do, but it's not normal by most standards. Quinten's includes things exercising (take the eight flights of stairs to our apartment eight times a day), growing bean plants from dried beans, and copying a huge amount of text into his notebook. Maxine is at a strange in-between stage, without a regular teacher, so she doesn't have homework per se. Her class is going to do self-directed projects, but they are still working on how that will look.
And now it is April 20th, more than two weeks since I started. I'm going to leave you with just one photo:
Maxine and I with 2000 pieces of Glorious Fun!
1 comment:
Mom is impressed. An actual blog post.
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