Lascours Lockdown, Day 282

Monday, December 21st. 

Twinkle must have snacked on leftover candy last night as this morning, the girls found her in the bathroom brushing her teeth!

Yesterday, my exercise session serendipitously coincided perfectly with the end of the final X Files episode. They surprisingly managed to round up the eleventh season in a satisfactory way. This morning, I continued Downton Abbey. While I did the exercise bike, I sent the girls down to their room with a box to each fill with five things they no longer need. They chose relatively small things, so I think we'll do five per day until Christmas. 

After, I went out to pick up a package at La Poste and one final gift to replace an online order which fell through. 

When I returned, the girls had gone on a walk with Marie-Elisabeth to deliver a Christmas gift, so I sat down to check my work email before making lunch. 

New messages over the weekend gave me to understand I had misinterpreted messages earlier in the week. The current plan for January at the university is for freshman in classes of up to 150 to return to the hybrid system from the beginning of the semester on January 11th. Others will follow the 18th. Bigger class groups will go back on site starting February 4th. I don't have any freshman next semester or any big lecture classes, so I guess I'll be teaching the first week entirely online and then returning to campus for hybrid teaching on the 18th. I'm teaching Monday to Wednesday next semester. 

Maeva's teacher managed to reset the problem reading rally story for her so she was able to read it and answer the questions herself.

This afternoon, I sat down at the computer with a cup of tea to begin grading translation exams. 

Later, the girls each took a turn making the other a scavenger hunt. Then we sat down to a family viewing of the animated 2019 Klaus.

Following the movie, we attempted to view the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Due to local cloud cover, our attempts to view it in the night sky were thwarted so we reverted to Plan B: an online live feed.

In response to a new faster-spreading strain of coronavirus discovered in the UK, the French government closed its borders with Britain yesterday for 48 hours. This is more of a political than a public health gesture as the new strain is almost certainly already making its merry way around the hexagon.