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2020-10-05
Water Slides in the Days of Covid
My family resided in Columbus, Georgia during the Covid-19 pandemic. In October 2020 my sister-in-law’s family came to visit us from Arizona. We decided to take our families to Great Wolf Lodge in LaGrange, Georgia, just 45 minutes from my home, for a two-day vacation. This was my first experience traveling after travel restrictions were lifted. Great Wolf Lodge houses an indoor water park, restaurants, and family entertainment attractions, as well as hotel accommodations all in one building. My family had visited before the pandemic, so we were familiar with the resort and procedures. This made changes in policies and behavior more evident than they may have been otherwise. Safety protocol set in place at Great Wolf Lodge included mandatory mask wearing in the hallways and open areas of the resort. Masks were not required in the waterpark; however, signs were posted throughout detailing mandatory social distancing protocol. Individuals were to remain at least six feet apart from each other in all areas, especially when waiting in lines. The guidelines were a nice idea, but large swarms of children eager to get onto a waterslide cared little for waiting in lines any distance apart. The adults seemed to feel the same way too. There was no personal space while waiting in lines, much less six feet social distance. In normal times, Great Wolf hosts bedtime dance parties and stories in their main lobby for the kids. Due to Covid restrictions, however, these dance parties were canceled and instead were broadcast on a set TV channel that could be viewed from guests' rooms. Our families arrived around 1:00 in the afternoon on day one. One person went in to do the checking in and then we headed to our rooms to change and head to the park. Everyone played for at least three hours. A few of the older kids tired out earlier and headed back to the rooms. The rest of us headed back to the rooms for dinner with the plan to meet up again afterward and play until the park shut down. Over the next hour, almost all of my kids started coughing. We started to wonder if they were having a reaction to the chlorine. Then the runny noses started and even the most excited kids said they were too tired to go back that night. After talking to my sister-in-law, the same thing was happening in her family. We decided to call it a night and check back in the morning. By morning, we had to call it. Even mild cold symptoms were enough in those days to get you thrown out of public places and we had to be cautious with even the smallest symptom that might indicate Covid-19. We knew the only responsible thing was to pack it up and head home. We had a great three hour vacation the day before, but the rest of it just wasn’t going to happen. It was the most expensive three hour vacation I think I’ll ever have. We felt like criminals smuggling our tightly masked children through the halls that morning and begging them to hold in their sneezes or coughs until we got outside. We were so glad we had chosen to vacation only 45 minutes from home that time. The colds passed, and eventually we returned to Great Wolf Lodge to enjoy a full vacation. We still laugh, though, about our attempt at a “normal” vacation in the midst of Covid-19. -
2020-04-10
The Whir and the Waft
When schools shut down, there was a transition period where teachers waited to find out what they would need to do next. When that was decided, our work week was drastically changed. To achieve equity, we gave 30 minute lessons over Google Meets to anyone who wanted to show up twice a week. This meant a lot of free time--which meant reading! I went to the local bookstore and there was a line: only 5 people allowed in the massive 1-block building at a time. When I was permitted entrance to the silent space, I had to accept hand sanitizer from an automatic dispenser. This was not my first encounter with the substance, but it was the most memorable. The machine whirred and spit an enormous amount into my hands, completely filling my palms with watery, reeking sanitizer. I looked around for a towel or space to shake it off...there was so much! It began sliding through my fingers and dripping down my arms, a cold, slow trickle that spread the hospital scent with it. I frantically began rubbing my hands, but even so, huge glops of it splattered on the linoleum floor as I quickly walked to spread the leaking substance more thinly over the floor and avoid creating a puddle. The sterile and unpleasant smell stuck to my skin and followed me throughout the store, into my car, and to the end of my day. This will be hard to forget, and it made me buy my own, thicker hand sanitizer that I could control, and that smelled like pineapples and mango, and raspberry lemonade (it took some time to order, though, because so many companies were out of product). I didn't realize then, in April 2020, that machines like this would be everywhere, or that upon return to my classroom the next April, I would have my own gallon jug of it to offer students. The smell and the feel of that bookstore experience still make me cringe, yet this scent and substance have been normalized and their presence is expected and sought out. The whir and the waft of alcohol will not leave my senses, and, though they tell an important sensory history of this pandemic, I wish they would. -
2021-10-07
It's just allergies, I swear!
As someone who has seasonal allergies, I got this look a lot at the beginning of the pandemic. -
2020-03-15
Lockdown in the Frozen Tundra
When we first got the news about school closing down for a couple days, school was the last thing on my friend group and I's minds. When we got off school that gloomy March day, I instantly met up with my friends to go up north for a trip we had been planning for weeks. I was so excited because we had so many activities planned such as snowshoeing, hiking, and snowmobiling. After we all met up, we packed up the car and left. At the time, we had heard things about Covid-19 from around the world, but we were all still pretty foggy on what it is and what it does to you. It was almost as if we acknowledged that it existed, but told ourselves that it could never happen in the United States. When we got there, we unpacked all of our things and quickly headed outside to go snowshoeing on a nearby path. When we were through with our activities for the day, we headed back to the cabin. I remember checking my phone and having a bunch of texts from my parents and friends saying that they had just cancelled school for another couple of weeks, and I started to think that maybe this whole thing was more serious than I had thought. Looking back on this picture, I look at all of our faces and notice that we were so oblivious to what we were about to experience. This is essentially the picture taken before our lives changed forever. -
2020-11-02
Cold in the Classroom
If you have ever been in a middle school classroom, feeling cold is probably not the first thing that you think of. One might think of rowdy kids, perhaps non-inviting smells, stuffy air, but not necessarily the feeling of cold. After going home on March 13, 2020, I was forced to work remotely for the remainder of the 2019-20 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is still crazy to think how quickly everything changed from normal life to the furthest thing from it—just two days before the end of in-person schooling, I was still planning on going on the eighth grade Washington, DC trip! Anyway, going into the 2020-21 school year, because teachers were allowed to return to their classrooms (even though school would remain in distance for the foreseeable future), I decided that I would go into my classroom and work from there. I figured that it would help create a sense of normalcy in my own life while offering a familiar background to my students. After a few d ays of w orking from school without any students, I noticed how cold it was in my classroom. On a normal school day, I would turn on the air conditioning fairly early in the morning, being that the room would become warm and stuffy shortly after the students arrived. Even with it warm outside, I was noticing myself running the heater well into the afternoon. Without the heater, my classroom would quickly become unbearably cold! With brick walls and only a thin layer of carpet over a concrete floor, it is clear why it was so cold. I was just one person in a room that would normally have around 30—my body heat alone wasn't going to heat up the room! It is amazing to think that a silly little thing like the temperature of my classroom kind of got me down. No matter what I did to try and simulate normal life, it was just impossible for life to be normal, and that nagging cold was there to remind me of that fact. Just writing this down, I can feel the cold on my arms and legs, and I have a n urge to go and get a blanket, put on a sweatshirt, or turn on the heater. Come to think about it, I can also feel the pain in my lower back from sitting in front of a computer all day! In addition to the sense of touch/feeling being noticeably different, I have to say, the absence of, shall we say, interesting smells has also been out of the ordinary for my middle school classroom. I really cannot complain all too much when it comes to my experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic; I am lucky enough to still be employed, I can work at home if I wanted to, and no one all too close to me has had the disease. A great many people around the globe have had their lives shattered in the past year, so I really should be counting my blessings. With that said, I feel as if the coldness of my classroom somewhat symbolizes the isolation that I (and many others) are feeling during this trying time. The simple fact that there are not 30+ individuals in the room is causing the cold and, again, it is a nagging reminder that the world is simply not the same as it was a year ago, no matter how much we wish it were. -
2020-11-02
Cold in the Classroom
If you have ever been in a middle school classroom, feeling cold is probably not the first thing that you think of. One might think of rowdy kids, perhaps non-inviting smells, stuffy air, but not necessarily the feeling of cold. After going home on March 13, 2020, I was forced to work remotely for the remainder of the 2019-20 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is still crazy to think how quickly everything changed from normal life to the furthest thing from it—just two days before the end of in-person schooling, I was still planning on going on the eighth grade Washington, DC trip! Anyway, going into the 2020-21 school year, because teachers were allowed to return to their classrooms (even though school would remain in distance for the foreseeable future), I decided that I would go into my classroom and work from there. I figured that it would help create a sense of normalcy in my own life while offering a familiar background to my students. After a few days of working from school without any students, I noticed how cold it was in my classroom. On a normal school day, I would turn on the air conditioning fairly early in the morning, being that the room would become warm and stuffy shortly after the students arrived. Even with it warm outside, I was noticing myself running the heater well into the afternoon. Without the heater, my classroom would quickly become unbearably cold! With brick walls and only a thin layer of carpet over a concrete floor, it is clear why it was so cold. I was just one person in a room that would normally have around 30—my body heat alone wasn't going to heat up the room! It is amazing to think that a silly little thing like the temperature of my classroom kind of got me down. No matter what I did to try and simulate normal life, it was just impossible for life to be normal, and that nagging cold was there to remind me of that fact. Just writing this down, I can feel the cold on my arms and legs, and I have an urge to go and get a blanket, put on a sweatshirt, or turn on the heater. Come to think about it, I can also feel the pain in my lower back from sitting in front of a computer all day! In addition to the sense of touch/feeling being noticeably different, I have to say, the absence of, shall we say, interesting smells has also been out of the ordinary for my middle school classroom. I really cannot complain all too much when it comes to my experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic; I am lucky enough to still be employed, I can work at home if I wanted to, and no one all too close to me has had the disease. A great many people around the globe have had their lives shattered in the past year, so I really should be counting my blessings. With that said, I feel as if the coldness of my classroom somewhat symbolizes the isolation that I (and many others) are feeling during this trying time. The simple fact that there are not 30+ individuals in the room is causing the cold and, again, it is a nagging reminder that the world is simply not the same as it was a year ago, no matter how much we wish it were. -
2020-10-29
First Day of Cold.
It's cold. I usually waited for the cold. I enjoy wearing a sweater, and the escape from the heat of summer. This year, for the first time, I dreaded winter. They said COVID-19 is stronger in the cold. I guess we will find out. -
2020-10-07
Military Edition
this story is important to me because members who are serving in the armed force, will understand and relate to the struggles that I went through during this pandemic.