Quarantine

As I’ve been getting stronger I’ve started to gradually do more. Yet, like many people we have the prospect of wondering how this pandemic will be affecting us as a family. My husband works with the cruise industry, obviously it’s been very affected by the current situation. So as he works each evening to prepare for the lifting of restrictions, and we hope and pray for our financial future, I’ve been looking at how I can help.

To me one of the good things about being a stay at home mum is that when we face financial difficulty their may be ways in which I can help. When both spouses are working and your expenditure matches that two fold income, there may not be a similar resource to draw from. So I’ve recently been completing a course online to teach English as a foreign language, and possibly French too. I’m a former teacher anyway, so this may be a way to provide an additional income source whilst staying at home God willing.

In France itself we had the exciting prospect of some the restrictions of the confinement (as it’s called here) lifted. There was news that the maternal children would be going back on 11th May. I was incredibly relieved. I’ve been teaching my youngest daughter to read here at home and she’s doing wonderfully. As I’ve said before her speech has been really impacted upon by the move and other issues, so reading has developed this significantly.

However I’m teaching her in English, as we don’t have a lot of French children’s books for her age group. We’ve bought them for her, but she’s ripped and scribbled on them. There’s nothing more frustrating is there? This phase stopped a lot earlier with my eldest daughter because she was reading from the age of three onwards, but our youngest’ speech proved a negative factor here too.

So, no books and my poor pronunciation meant I’ve concentrated on English. That and zero contact with the outside world has meant I’ve been very worried about her losing what little French she has. These are extraordinary times, but the consequences are significant for those kiddos struggling at school.

Yesterday we left the house and suddenly we were chatting with two neighbours. I’ve got to say no one seemed to consider social distancing, 😬. One of our neighbours said the mid May date wasn’t a definite, in fact she wasn’t confident of it at all. So I’ll have to phone on Monday and make sure, my other neighbour suggested speaking with the Maire as they would be the person to make the decision.*

Our neighbours had experienced the police stopping them, which we’ve fortunately avoided. One was spoken to about going for a loaf of bread 😬 and she’d heard from a friend that she’d been reprimanded going for baby nappies as these “weren’t essential” – 😬 😱. I can’t thing of a lot more things that are essential than nappies from the grocery store.

Whilst I’ve been ill my husband started to take the girls out on long walks. For the first time I went with them on Friday, and I joined them Saturday too. I thought I’d share some photos of the local scenery.

God bless you all; I hope you and your family are well.