Life in the Time of COVID-19

I feel like I've started to write this update many times over the past few months, but never really feel like I've gotten it right. At this point I have been living under some form of social distancing and quarantine for more than 100 days. There have been many significant changes in my life during these past few months, so I'll try and update a little bit of everything.

February:

The big news here was adopting Dante; my sweet little Colombian street rescue! At the start of February he showed up on campus at Colegio Canadiense, and after a week of searching some friends determined that he didn't have a family looking for him and needed adoption. I jumped on that right away. Below is the first photo of him that I saw (that look just melted my heart) and Dante a few hours after I picked him up. Due to some apartment issues, I wasn't able to take him home straight away. Thankfully some really great friends, Trevor and Gabe, were able to keep him for a few weeks while I was able to get everything sorted out for Dante to come with me full time!

March:

COVID-19 started to become a bigger problem here in Colombia as the first cases started to show up. We switched to distance learning on March 13 after very rapid developments in Medellín and Colombia. The following week I saw 4 of my 5 roommates return to their home countries, the start of an official quarantine (announced March 19 and still going), and four new roommates moving in to the apartment, and the last of my original roommates deciding to move to live on his own. At the start of quarantine, my girlfriend Evelin and I made the decision for her to stay with me because my apartment had a lot more space, even with the extra people.

Thanksgiving event with Evelin

April:

April was just a mess for me. My mental health took a dive, I had trouble creating healthy and helpful routines, and generally struggled to settle into the quarantine life. This is probably why I ended up shaving my head out of a combination of boredom and amusement... At the end of the month, Evelin and I decided to move down the street to an empty apartment that my landlord had available. Instead of sharing a space with 4 other roommates, we'd have a 3-bedroom duplex apartment to ourselves. The change was amazing and the big start to rebuilding our mental health again.

A family breakfast before leaving the old apartment 

Dante was also mauled by another dog one evening while we were out for a late night walk. It lasted only a second or two at most, but the injury to his neck required 5 full weeks of vet appointments every 2-3 days. Fortunately he was still a happy pup and never lost his interest in meeting/playing with the other dogs. 

Dante 3 weeks into recovery

May:

Things got a little weird for me mentally as school started to wrap up for the year
. As my courses came to a close and I had less prep-work to do, I found that I wasn't filling up that time with anything useful. I tried to get ahead on my work for the new year in August, but I was reaching my mental limits and ended up having to focus on just getting enough done. At times I was feeling a little manic as I bounced between good days and bad ones.

Even with international flights suspended in Colombia, there were still options for humanitarian flights to Toronto out of Bogota, or through the US (stopping in Florida, which wasn't terribly appealing). The price of a one-way ticket was easily over $1000 CAD (especially when not including the in-country travel needed). And there wasn't going to be any way to get back until after September 1 (New school year starts August 3). So with that in mind, on top of all the issues of possibly contracting COVID-19 and spreading it to my family, I made the decision to stay in Medellín for the summer holidays. 

In good news, Evelin and I talked more about our relationship and living together through the quarantine and decided that it was time for us to officially move in together and for her to stop renting the apartment that she hadn't used in almost 2 months. 

Dante enjoying his spot in the new apartment

June:

And here we are into June. Since I wasn't going anywhere for the summer, I started to get on top of a few things I had been putting off for too long. One of the first was dealing with the high blood pressure that has been slowly creeping up on me the past few years. It unfortunately runs in the family, and after a few years of denial I ended up speaking with a doctor about treatment. At the time I was regularly above 140/90 even when resting. Thankfully with medication it was really easy to get it back under control. 

Another thing I was able to get back to was seriously working on my Spanish. While my classes had switched to an online format with the start of quarantine, I became less able to focus in classes as the weeks and months went on. I found I was getting frustrated by sitting in front of my computer all day for work and then spending more hours afterwards in class. One of the reasons I chose teaching as my profession was that I need to interact with people face-to-face regularly, and Zoom meetings didn't do it for me anymore. So I jumped back into books and Netflix in Spanish. Evelin and I watched Casa de Papel in Spanish (with English subs to help), I've been reading Harry Potter in Spanish which is getting easier with each chapter, and I've gotten back into other short stories, podcasts, online mini-lessons on YouTube, and more. The difference in my abilities between now and this time last year is incredible for me. And the difference between today and before I decided to move to Colombia is astonishing. 

In truly sad news, my Nana passed away on June 19. I am absolutely amazed at how tough that woman was. After a debilitating stroke 10 years ago that should have been fatal, she managed to stick around to be a part of many more important family events. It's challenging at times knowing that I hadn't seen her since last summer when I was home, but even if I had gone home, I wouldn't have been allowed into the nursing home until it was too late.

And into the future:

For me, the biggest question is what am I going to do through the month of July while stuck at home during the quarantine. Evelin and I have started expanding our social bubble a little further, visiting her family, as well as having 1 or 2 friends over for drinks. Evelin is on a couple weeks of holidays, but will need to work from home for most of July getting things ready for the new school year. So for much of the day I'll have plenty of time to tackle some projects, whatever those may look like. If I'm really productive, I'd love to get my first month of planning finished for next year. I'll be pretty busy with two sections of AP Physics 1 and three sections of Earth and Space Science, which is a brand new course that I will be building from scratch. I've got lots of ideas, but I need to plan out everything so I know where we'll be going.