Corona Statistics you don't see on the News!

One of several daily Zoom calls for schooling and contact with long-lost friends

Daily average statistics of our home quarantine 

Hours parsing WhatsApps groups to figure out daily school assignments: 3

Daily homeschooling assignments completed: .4 out of 12 (with luck)

Pencils gone missing or broken: 10 (yes, per day)

Zoom calls (for children): 4

Sheets of paper lost to doodling, drawing and "art" work: 36

Meals consumed by three children: 65

Food micro-particles swept off the floor: 1.57 million

Hours spent dish washing: 2

Furniture items damaged to varying degrees: 1

Hours spent putting toys away again: 4

Minutes spent in fresh air outside: 19

Sibling fights broken up: 85

Cases of coronavirus at home: 0

Cases of high blood pressure: 2

During time out in our 100-meter perimeter.
The forced labor includes Lucas reading to his non-attentive audience
and the rest of us decorating the forlorn path less traveled these days.

Follow @nic_jansezian

Corona Fallout: 'Home Sheltering' and Remote 'Learning'

Me outside during yard time

In the irony of what has come to be known as "home sheltering," the home itself has found itself in a situation that is the exact opposite of shelter since everything inside it - from food to furniture - has become an endangered species.

As we hunker down for the interminable and indefinite future within the confines of our apartment, we fear all of our magic markers will run dry, that the entire stuffing will come out of that shiny new rip in our sofa, that the coils in daddy and mommy's bed will lose their spring due to our jumping and that our academic progress will be stunted beyond repair thanks to our new teachers (our parents, bless their hearts). My glasses, which I broke in a dazzling act right before the corona-shutdown, remain unfixed and unused. Our school shirts have been retired. And we drift casually from nighttime to daytime pajamas at some point in a 24-hour period.

If everything else fails in homeschooling... 

...at least we will be able to use our heads for something! 

Homeschool sports - on Zoom

Homeschool showoff 

Perhaps our fears are misplaced and we should be more concerned about the coronavirus seeping through our four walls. But for now we are too busy to add fear to our checklist. Hence, fewer blogs. On a positive note, maybe we can learn how to use the damaged wooden furniture to make paper. Now that would be what I call homeschooling.

When parks just won't do... because they are off limits! Boredom is the new mother of invention.

Follow @nic_jansezian

Coronapalooza: "Remote Learning" Day 5

It has come to this.

"Remote Learning" is going well. As you can see from this photo.

What you may not know is that the floor onto which we are leaping is covered with blankets, stuffed animals, pajamas and pillows from our beds. And from the sofa.

This is only symbolic of how mommy and daddy are feeling as they consider the balcony.

Utter disaster.

Chaos. 

Fauda! (which means chaos in Arabic and is a great series to watch in times of high anxiety!)

But never mind, most of the pressure is essentially off as this is the LAST DAY of remote learning! I'm not really sure what happened but the announcement came in last night that we no longer get our live stream of teachers who tackled various subjects to keep us somewhat up to date on our academic skills.

I'm not sure how much regression we can expect in the next five weeks. Or what we will do if the internet goes down or iPads stop working.

But never mind academics. We are being rather creative and helpful even in times of crisis and quarantine. Lucas will help the children of the world improve their judo skills, one Lego doll at a time:

Follow @nic_jansezian

“Remote Learning” Day 2

Schools are out. And so are we!

Israeli schools are closed and millions of students are supposed to be learning from home in an effort to curb the spread of the contagious coronavirus. This is what we are doing instead. See photo ☝🏼

The Hebrew language uses certain abbreviations for some phrases such as “halat” which stands for hofesh le’lo teshlum, meaning vacation without pay. We’ve just developed a new phrase as evidenced by these photos: halal - hofesh le’lo limudim - vacation without learning!

While many adults are currently getting sent off to "unpaid vacations," the children are sent off to "vacation" and, if we learned anything in school, there is no formal "learning" on vacation!

Follow @nic_jansezian

Corona Update #3: “Remote Learning”

"Remote learning"
Right?

It is Day 1 of Five Weeks in the Wilderness of No School. You can see how this is going. Send the kids out on their own to learn about nature ... or something ... and monitor from a distance. With a cup of coffee.

Counting by cookies! Gotta love "home schooling"

No time for blogging, mommy has to try to work after I go to bed. Can you hear us kids laughing from across the ocean, desert, home quarantine ...  or whatever has come between us?

As you can see, the bribery attempts have already deteriorated into home-baked cookies. M&D are in trouble! 

Follow @nic_jansezian

Corona Update #2: Home Schooling 101

All alone in the world. The Holy Land under
lockdown and an empty Old City in Jerusalem.

It's official: Schools are closed for an eternal five weeks, up till and through the Passover and Easter break. Five weeks. At least. Thank you, #Coronavacation!

And at the same time, there shall be nothing to do with all this free time. In light of #Coronapanicdemic, everything in the country from restaurants to amusement parks to gyms and malls have been shut down except for supermarkets. What will I do without Shalva and my girlfriends, Talia, Adi and Tehila? And Epraim and Aharon? What will I do without school, without Yasmin, Haim and Haya, Mustafa, Dror and Eyal? It will be lonely and jarring having no routine and not seeing my friends. I will also not be getting therapy and my siblings will probably find out soon that their after-school activities are canceled too.

Supposedly the Ministry of Education has a digitized system in place for home learning, but mommy and daddy can already see where this is going. We've already destroyed the apartment several times over, I personally broke the cable box (fixed now), we've eaten 80 times a day (so much for stockpiling) and we've used every available scrap paper for "arts and crafts" (poor trees).

And that was just the weekend! We haven't even embarked upon our five-week journey in the wilderness.

Follow @nic_jansezian

Corona update #1: O Little Town/Street of Bethlehem

Raia/Jasmine of Arabia with Tiger Rajah
on Bethlehem ROAD

Living in Coronaviruspanic land has been interesting to say the least, and third elections be darned, there is no other news in all of Israel. Forget prime minister, the Ministry of Health is in the running to be the Messiah as it continues to institute restrictions designed to save all citizens.

One particular edict that came out last week rocked our little world: People that live in or have been to Bethlehem in the last two weeks have been ordered to quarantine themselves. 

That is like saying all of Queens should be quarantined immediately including anyone who landed at an airport and took public transportation after their flight over the past two weeks.

Okay, maybe a smaller neighborhood than the vast Queens county, but still. You get the picture.

The announcement about Bethlehem affected a large percentage of people at our school, students and staff alike. Our school had been flying under the radar being the only public school still having classes and not on the weeklong break that is Purim. I'm not sure if we were being punished for learning, but the Ministry of Education teamed up with the Min of Health and they swept in to find out if Coronamaniavirus has breached the seal of our school's doors.

One by one, the teachers asked each student whether they have been to Bethlehem in the last few days. Raia, who is in first grade, didn't think long about this trick question.

"Yes," she emphatically responded!

That sent the school into a tizzy and prompted an immediate phone call from her teacher who interrogated mommy as to our whereabouts in the last few weeks.

“No we haven’t been there in the past two weeks,” mommy was perplexed. “I don’t know why Raia would say that.”

Was Raia intentionally trying to get our family quarantined??? Then a lightbulb went on for dad.

“We live on Bethlehem Road!”

Sure enough, the source of the confusion. Well at least she knows her address.

Nevertheless, it was all enough for MOH/MOE to decide to shutter the school. Parents, who were deep into their workdays around the country at the plum hour of 11 a.m., received an alarming and urgent message: ALL STUDIES HAVE CEASED AS OF THIS MOMENT. COME PICK UP YOUR CHILDREN IMMEDIATELY!

Fake news, mommy scoffed and continued writing. But as more messages poured in, they realized it was actual. It was actual that parents had to come pick up us kids... but there was not one case of coronavirus at our school (thank God). Nevertheless, there was no need to continue learning while the rest of the city gathered at large events and infected one another anyway.

We banked an extra day and a half of vacation! Go kids!

Continue to check back in for all of the important Coronavirus updates impacting the lives of children worldwide.

Follow @nic_jansezian