Lascours Lockdown, Day 188

Friday, September 18th. 

Still exhausted when I woke up this morning. But I made myself get on the exercise bike and that helped. I felt normal once I had pushed through my fifty-five minutes and was able to productively work on class prep for most of the morning.

I went to Jenny's for lunch today. She wanted to hear all about Ellie Bluebell as they've been wanting to get an EV themselves for awhile but thought it was out of their price range. I stayed at her house for yoga in the backyard, then picked up Tiger's meds from the vet on the way home.

I finally figured out through a combination of things, including talking to Jenny's IT husband Olivier over lunch, that my Zoom woes at the university might all be solved if I can connect via ethernet (all of the classrooms have ports, but not cables). My teaching computer doesn't have an ethernet port, but I've learned there are adapters. I dug up an ethernet cable from a box in the laundry room and ordered a USB C adapter that should come sometime next week.

The Covid-19 circle is tightening around us. One of the third graders mentioned yesterday now has a confirmed case. The others are being tested. Annick, the Maternelle staff member mentioned yesterday reportedly has a strong case. She contracted it carpooling with three other colleagues, one of whom was a carrier, on the way to a work training day. At least one of the others is quite sick as well. Maeva's classmate, Agathe, has come down with fever, sore throat and loss of taste. The 7-day moving average in France is now over 8,700. However, the Minister of Health decided yesterday to relax school coronavirus protocols. They say the science shows that children don't infect each other or adults at very high rates. Thus, they've decided to no longer shut down classes or schools for less than three cases. If a student gets sick, they'll just stay home like they would with any other illness. They say they are still taking adult to adult and adult to child transmission very seriously, though. In Marseille, there is apparently a severe shortage of nurses and doctors and a rush to hire a hundred nurses as quickly as possible to deal with the steadily increasing number of Covid-19 cases.

Two PTA meetings this evening to vote in new executive committees. We didn't advertise them much on purpose so as to keep numbers down as we were limited to ten people at a time in the town hall we reserve for meetings. The strategy was a success. There were six of us for the Maternelle meeting and five of us for the Elementary one. Masks were worn all around and we wiped down the tables as requested by the city on our way out. My Maternelle PTA duties are now officially over. Just have to meet with the new president Sunday morning to show her the ropes and pass off my materials and I'll be free!