11 days seems like forever

The bus that took us to the long term hotel was going to be the last time I saw the boys for 11 days. When we got to the long term hotel we were told that we would not be able to stay in one room and that we had to keep the same arrangement of rooms that we had at the first hotel, which meant Mark and Alex together and me on my own.

I don’t know how to adequately express how disappointed I was and how nervous I was- I oscillate between being extroverted and introverted, but 11 days on my own by myself with nothing but my own thoughts is a daunting idea. I have had a tiny glimpse of prison and have decided not to murder anyone for fear of solitary confinement in prison.

They even put our rooms on opposite sides of the hotel, although I did share a wall with Vivian. So once we got up stairs, that was it. I didn’t take any pictures of my room, I don’t know why, it’s not like I didn’t have time! It was a bit run down, and a pretty dirty room- I did not walk on the carpet barefoot because it felt dusty. The boys room had candy or gum stuck into the carpet. There was a smallish bathroom, a big bed (the boys’ room had two beds) a little desk, sitting chair and weird end table. When we got into the room, there were big 5 liter jugs of water, meant to last us as drinking water the whole time we were in the hotel. There were also the little hotel shampoos, soaps, slippers, enough for one for each day of confinement. Chopsticks for each meal, more chlorine tablets for the toilet, and thermometers, because at this hotel, we were going to check our own temperature and report it to the health team twice a day.

The first day was fine, by the time we got in and settled I think it was lunch time. There was some confusion because they decided I needed a special diet that was no fish, no salt and something else. Vivian called them up to explain that it was not me, but maybe someone else on our floor, but I still got a couple really bland tasteless meals.

I tried to photograph every meal while we were in quarantine to give you a perspective on why I was not happy. Some meals are better than others, but in the end, I ate an unbelievable amount of rice, since that was the one thing every meal that I was sure I’d like.

This was my view from my room- every available spot of unused land near us is turned into farming by local people. I would watch them tend the plots and try to figure out what the vegetables were.

And sometimes, we even got nice sunsets (although the windows were weirdly tinted).

One thing we decided to do, was we watched movies together as a family, even from other rooms, we’d call each other, say one two three, go and then start the movie at the same time. Perversely, we watched a lot of prison movies, including showing Alex Papillon, No Escape, and I feel like there was another one I’m forgetting. In addition, Alex and Mark were alternating between prison work outs, Mark teaching class, and watching movies. They watched a lot of things to round out Alex’s film education.

We were lucky in that we could get deliveries of fresh fruit, and buy things off of Taobao to have them delivered, we’ve been told that people going through it now aren’t able to do either of those things. I bought myself a giant diamond art painting to work on (that hasn’t been worked on since we left quarantine), and Alex got his Lego Star Wars Advent calendar, which was a count down to Christmas as well as a countdown to getting out of quarantine.

You think to yourself, I can stay at a hotel for two weeks, I’ll get work done, watch some movies, read a book…. I can’t begin to express how much that all goes out the window when you’re in the middle of it. You start counting down until they will bring your next meal, even if you don’t want to eat it, it just gives you something to focus on. I’ve never gone that long without being with Alex, Uganda was the longest before that, but at least that was a good trip with lots to do to keep me distracted.

I’m going to fast forward because I think that’s enough time spent on this, it still bums me out. We had someone on our flight a couple rows ahead of us test positive for covid, so in addition to the regular three tests we were supposed to have, we had to have two extra tests. The tests were not so bad, throat swabs instead of nasal swabs, the throat swabs are very similar to a strep test. The downside was the blood test, I think it was on day 9. The two people who came room to room to draw blood had pre-cut rubber bands to tie around your arm to draw blood, except that they were too short to go around my arm, so they decided to tie it around my forearm to draw the blood.

As this is happening, I’m chatting with Vivian who is hanging outside her door translating for me and the health workers. I’m laughing about tattoos and not being needle shy, and all of a sudden I feel wet dripping on my hand, the needle has come out of my wrist and I am leaking blood everywhere, the poor health care workers didn’t know what to do. Rather than try again, they moved to collect blood on the other wrist. They leave and I go back to my room- but all of a sudden I have this burning itching sensation going from the blood draw point in both directions- up into my palms and into my forearms. I didn’t want to call the health people back (super worried they’d take me to worse quarantine) so I called Mark- I’ve never had a reaction like that to a blood draw before, but I would not recommend it, it was awful! After about an hour it was back to normal, but I had some gnarly bruising to go along with it.

It was one step closer to being done though. Every day the boys would send me a picture of our countdown to freedom calendar, and it made it a little easier to stand.

I tell you all this, knowing that until you do it, it doesn’t quite hit home the same way. And even now, we can’t grasp what people who do the quarantine now have to deal with. It’s up to 35 days in hotel quarantine, and one or two weeks at home depending on where you are- and at last count it was something like 9 tests over the course of the 35 days. I can tell you honestly, I’d rather chew my own arm off than go through that.