And also with you…

It has been officially one week of “Social distant Quarantine” here in SEA, and what a week it has been.

for the virus, not the dust.

We closed the school as the city suggested on Wednesday March 18. I taught on Tuesday that 17th to my students at the preschool and to my college students. This feels like forever ago.

Precautionary measure were taken for a dear friend of mine who had to move quite suddenly, and I offered to puppy-sit for her. How funny life turns!

It’s a good thing you’re cute!

3/4 roommates moved back home to be with their families as we wait out the virus and collected their things. Quarantine means that there’s not a whole lot of coming and going like before.

Pull out the music! 

Emails read. News delivered. Videos. Borders closing. And for an entire week it felt like we were the only ones in the city doing and acting like there was a crisis. That is until two cases were confirmed in the capital and now my friends are starting to pay attention.

It’s not difficult to explain what’s happening because my feelings and my experiences seem to be pretty universal. There’s a lot of people tossing around the word “indefinitely” and I think it might be the scariest word in the English language right now.

Grateful for a chance to get the family together.

What to remember: I am safe and healthy and currently self-quarantining as best as I can. Shopping only once a week for food (longer if we can make it I guess), wearing masks, washing hands, taking showers, staying 6 feet apart…you know…the works.

The puppy is cute and cuddly and has given me an excuse to go outside, but thankfully a friend volunteered to watch her for a week to give me a bit of break (those 5:30am wake up calls though…whew!)

Make sure you’ve got a schedule! Make something beautiful! 

When I imagine America, and try to process with my friends and family our experiences, and likewise try to encourage them, I imagine hands outstretched across the sea, pointed in my direction, willing that the Father will be with me. Thinking of me. And I’m immensely blessed. I hear your heart. They are the words that extend beyond the walls that we must wait behind, words that travel across cities and nations and oceans. They are echoed and repeated mostly by the Catholics many years ago, and the most beautiful thing to me, is that it’s not just one blessing but two, as we reach for one another.

“May the Lord be with you.”

“And also with you.”