Half Way!

They say that time flies when you are having fun. Well, I can’t say time is flying right now exactly, but little by little it did pass and here we are: 7 day’s done, 7 day’s to go. Last week we arrived in our room and next week, around this time, we will arrive in Shanghai to continue our way to Changshu, home. Well, that is if all the test results keep coming back negative!

So yes! We are halfway there!

So far we have been doing quite fine. Breakfast usually arrives around 7.30AM, which we take together over Skype. Then we both do a bit of workout and exercising and get dressed before we dial in again for coffee time at 10AM. Lunch is served early, at 11.30AM so then we dial in again. The afternoon is quite long sometimes. We use it to read, game (Hendrik Willem) catch up on photo albums (Mirjam) or skype with friends and family. Then dinner is served around 5.30PM so we dial in again and have dinner together. Then a few hours again of reading or chatting with friends, to have coffee together at 8PM, ready to start a movie on Netflix. And then we usually call again for a good night around 11PM. So that’s our day in a nutshell.

It’s great to be able to call and see each other so often during the day. Although with a hotel filled with guest who are all streaming, working online, video calling etc, we often find our conversations going like this: “I read this morning an interesting article in the paper about the situation in……hello, are you still there? Can you hear me? Hello? Can you see me? Your video is frozen. I cannot hear you. Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Oh yes, now I can hear you again. Eh, what was I saying..?” The fact that we are literally 15 steps away from each other makes that sometimes quite a frustrating experience. Luckily there is the good old phone call, number to number, that usually works well.

But apart from that our days are quiet and at times a bit boring. The real action these days is taking place closer to home, with the In-Fa Typhoon touching land near Shanghai and Suzhou today and tomorrow. Changshu is not directly in its course, but certainly close enough to catch a good amount of wind and rain. Luckily the campus is prepared and our lovely neighbors, Rich and Jodie, are keeping an eye on our apartment. Living next to a lake is often a blessing, but with a typhoon in the area it can become a little bit exciting. So we keep the fingers crossed that we can actually do our 2 weeks of home-observation at home! ​

Take care y’all!

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