Exercise. Shower. Netflix. Read. Plan. Study. Learn. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.
Such is the life when you're in a government mandated quarantine hotel. I see a physical human 6 times per day: 3 meal deliveries, 2 temperature checks, and 1 laundry return. Other than that we're left to our own devices. I chose to go home for the summer (post on that pending). Partly to see family that I haven't seen in 2, 2.5 or 3 years and partly to get vaccinated ... we didn't know how long it would be until we could get vaccinated in Vietnam (turns out my colleagues should be getting vaccinated next week). Also didn't know when the next time I'd get to see family would be. As it was, I signed a 2 year renewal and got a paid quarantine thrown in so figured I should take full advantage of that. But anyways, quarantine ... I knew I'd go batshit crazy without a plan so I made myself a daily/weekly schedule of things to do. Every morning I exercise before breakfast. I'm doing a 30 day couch to handstand challenge. Some days I do a zumba workout from youtube and other days I do a barre class. After breakfast, I'm usually productive and either do some lesson planning, reteach myself calculus BC topics, make answer keys, or write the calculator manuals I've been slowly working on for the last 2 years (they might actually get done this time). After lunch, I usually ngủ trưa (siesta, afternoon nap) until the afternoon temp check. I make sure to hula hoop daily, usually while reading or watching a tv show. Pacing the room is also an option, usually while listening to podcasts, though the room is only 10 paces one way. I did manage to get 10,000 steps one day (maybe another day too but didn't intentionally count that day). The "welcome committee" for the new hires came up with a quarantine wellness bingo and 10,000 steps in a day was one of the things. Check! In the evening is usually when I work on my languages. Keeping up with Vietnamese by listening to podcasts and journaling. I'm also starting to learn Korean. My original plan when I moved to Vietnam was "learn Vietnamese the first year then Korean the second" ... how naive I was ... Vietnamese is fucking hard. In case you're wondering "why Korean?" ... 70% of our students at St. Paul are Korean. "Why?" you ask ... because our owner is Korean. Anyways, I've done 2.5 lessons on Pimsleur, 4 topics on Duolingo, and watched a YouTube video about the Hangul alphabet. At minimum, I can now say to students/parents variations on: "hello", "nice to meet you", "I come from America", "Do you speak English?", "I do not speak Korean well", "thank you", "excuse me", "that's right", and "the weather is good". Occasionally, we have either trivia night or happy hour zoom sessions with other quarantined teachers along with whoever else wants to join. Our latest happy hour session topic was "Housing: the joys of living in Tay Ho". That wasn't literally the topic but may as well have been. Nothing against Tay Ho (I do like being able to get box mac and cheese from L's Place), it's just not my scene for everyday living. I'll take my vegetable lady and one legged water salesman who speak 0 English in Ba Dinh any day. After these 14 days are up, I get to go back to my apartment and hole up there for another 14 days. The friend who is cat sitting for me has agreed to stock up my fridge and my landlady offered to get me things as I need them. But I'm not allowed to leave the apartment for anything. So it'll be more of the same, just with a cat and lots of deep cleaning that I can do ... my fridge desperately needed a deep clean before I left for the states and I'm sure my cat has shed all over everything. August 5 ... freedom! Depending on the covid situation in Hanoi, it might only be freedom to get my own groceries from the store and take the stairs but freedom nonetheless.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
ShannonMath Teacher living and working in Hanoi, Vietnam Archives
February 2022
Categories |