Monday, January 25th, 2021
Today was a low key Monday and the beginning of a week with 3-5-hour online workshops every single day, sometimes two simultaneously! This promises to be a week of laptop overdose with little work getting done.
I find this a little frustrating as I am on the verge of emerging myself into the Sudan. I have assembled several documents, basically everything I could find on the country related to its economy, financial services and agricultural value chains, all of which are now waiting to be read. I am longing for a high capacity printer to print all the reports as it does seem easier to read and cross reference such quantities in hardcopy. I may just have to ask for exceptional approval to go into the office for this. Given the online marathon of the coming week this may have to wait though.
The weather matches the mood of the week. It is grey and windy with a chill factor in the air.
The county has noted this too and send text messages to its residents warning of winter weather conditions. The advice is to ensure all one’s devices be fully charged at all times. This is the only first world country I have lived in where the government alerts me of possible power cuts because of winter weather! In the four and a half years we have lived here we seem to have been lucky as we have not yet experienced a single power cut. Am hoping our luck holds over the next few days as I am not fond of cold and I enjoy my cozy warm dwelling. If worst comes to worst, we at least have the fireplace to huddle in front of to keep warm. Of course, that would kill all online events, including school.
The first semester of EM’s final school year is coming to an end this week, all virtual of course. And while the county has a reopening plan, having students return to school as of March 15th, I am not holding my breath for that to happen. IT seems neither are any of the other parents.
Yesterday was the first meeting of the class of 2021 graduation committee of the Parent-Teacher-Student- Association, which I have joined as I do want EM to have tangible memories of her last year in school. We discussed options for an outdoor graduation ceremony, if need be in batches of one hundred as we have 550 graduates this year. Clearly having a ceremony with them, parents and teachers in an indoor venue is an insane plan as it is highly unlikely numbers will have come down and vaccines administered to all by June 4th.
It makes me sad that any graduation ceremony would be streamed for parents. This reminds me of EM’s middle school graduation where the school had neglected to book a venue in time, so parents were relegated to watch a live stream. It makes me happy that so many people are trying to at least let the students have a graduation.
The school will not be able to support anything not sanctioned by the county, but fortunately the PTSA can organize private gatherings so we will start looking into possible venues, such as large parks, we might book to facilitate the necessary social distancing outdoors and possibly tented in the event of rain.
For last years seniors yard signs and a car parade were organized and the PTSA will repeat both this year. The car parade was a lot of fun and there have been calls to do this every year, regardless of the pandemic. Fortunately, with our convertible, we have the perfect car for this. I did suggest to the PTSA to include flags in the merchandise and they thought it was a great idea. I shall now ask the artist in residence to help with the design.
The PTSA will also try and organize senior nights by clubs to manage crowds. One idea was to book the streateries in the Woodmont triangle for a couple of hours in lieu of a prom. One would need to carefully think about how this could work, but I love the idea.
Inspired by the discussion I have written to our IB coordinator and a few parents suggesting we do something for our 97 IB Diploma graduates. I have floated special IB yard signs and the idea of a graduation picnic, all of which were extremely well received, and I even have four volunteers wanting to help.
Of course, we will need to comply with county rules on gatherings. So, the planning begins – despite COVID. We will just need to be very creative to make graduation special for the 2021 cohort!
The virus of course does not care and continues to spread while vaccination roll out continues to be a mess. Over the past 24-hours the US added 141k cases to reach the current tally of 25.8 million reported infections. 431k people have died and 15.5 million have recovered. This means some 10 million people are currently dealing with the virus.
A birthday party for a cat, even in none Covid times this might be a questionable occasion. With COVID it seems outright crazy. Not so to one Chilean cat owner. The result of the pandemic cat party: 15 people now are infected. If it were not so consequential, this might be funny.