Déjà Vu

It's been a hot second since I last posted on our blog, but I finally mustered up the time and energy this weekend. 

A couple of weeks ago there was community spread of Covid-19 for the first time in Taiwan since the pandemic started. At school we started having our temperature checked, and bleached the desks every morning. The government also made a mask mandate. On May 18th we started the first day of our two day mid-term testing. After the first day, all schools in Taiwan closed. The next day students had a stay-at-home rest day while teachers (my parents) were frantically learning how to teach online.

For the past two weeks I’ve been learning new content online. Some of my teachers film a lecture and put it up on YouTube for students to watch and take notes on, while others have the class gather on Google Meet to learn synchronously. For some teachers I imagine filming a lecture once is much easier than teaching the same thing over and over to 10 different classes. For me, remote learning has its benefits and drawbacks. I spend every weekday from 8:00AM to 3:45PM on the computer completing assignments which is surprisingly exhausting even though all I do is sit on my butt. I also spend all day at home by myself and I don’t see anyone in person besides my parents. 🙄 One of the benefits is I have access to online translators. Google translate and Pleco (a Chinese-English dictionary app) have helped me understand instructions and content much better than I am able to at school with just my paper dictionary. Even with this benefit, I still much prefer in-person school.

Since this is the first time there has been major community spread in Taiwan, some people here are learning the ways of the pandemic lifestyle for the first time, but for us foreigners this is déjà vu. When school was first cancelled they said we’d be back in 10 days. Then a week in (just like we predicted) they extended remote learning a couple more weeks. You might remember in the USA there was a massive toilet paper shortage, well over here it’s been difficult to find fresh vegetables at the grocery store. One thing that is not similar to what we experienced in March of 2020 is people here are already accustomed to wearing masks. There is also an app that you can download on your mobile device that tracks where you go and if someone who also has that app and was near you at some point tests positive for Covid-19 the app will notify you as a way to contact trace. Unfortunately, vaccines have not been widely distributed among the population and when Covid started to spread, vaccine distribution was stopped to prevent more spread.

In the midst of all this craziness we are also preparing to head home to Maine. We’ve been booking plane tickets and trying to also bring a cello on the airplane, which is super complicated and expensive apparently. Now that people are getting vaccinated it seems safer in Maine than Taiwan now. I feel like we just keep running away from the coronavirus. Anyways, I am super excited to return to Maine. The weather here is getting hotter and hotter every day, so I am excited to be able to enjoy swimming in Keyes Pond at grandma’s house in Maine. I am also looking forward to raspberries and blueberries and PIE!

~Soleil Huang-Dale