Quarantine in China Day #02 & #03

What’s for dinner today?

Waking up from a deep, deep sleep by someone who is yelling at your door that there is breakfast…. Welcome in quarantine!

The way food is served to us is quite peculiar. You need to understand that we are seen as a health hazard. So the whole hotel is locked down for this purpose and all staff is wearing protective clothes, masks, shoes etc. It’s like people from NASA have invaded the premises, and you are certainly expected not to interact with them. Stay.In.Your.Room.At.All.Times.
So the drill is as follows: they enter the hallway. They start yelling something in Chinese, I guess it means there is food. You get a hard knock on the door and when you open the door a plastic box with your food is standing on a little stool. When you sneak a glimpse down the hallway (be sure to only stick your head out and do not make the mistake to step out) you will find that the hallway is empty, like they went up in smoke. Or up in disinfectant perhaps. This happens 3 times a day and you can literally hear them coming from down the hall. Food is coming!!
But, we are lucky that we get 3 meals a day, we heard from others who got only breakfast and dinner. So I guess we won’t be needing all those bags of instant noodles after all…

The taste of the food is… well quite ok I guess. We are not experts in Chinese cuisine so it’s hard to say anything about the quality of the food. But it’s divers and there is always something that we find tasty (and usually also something we find less tasty..). The box consists of 5 compartments and a separate box of soup. Till now it always contains rice, usually 2 types of vegetables and 2 types of meat/chicken or fish. Or something we cannot recognise. And it always comes with a piece of fruit, which is well appreciated!

Breakfast, lunch & dinner

So are we getting used to being locked up? Well, in a way perhaps we are. The arrival day was hard, but day #02 went a lot better. And by now we are more than halfway day #03 and we have not yet lost our mind, are not feeling depressed nor losing appetite… We are doing quite ok. In fact, we are terrible busy! Hendrik is of course at work and there is plenty of that happening right now. And I am keeping myself busy with sport exercises, skype calls, writing a blog or two (..), connecting with family and friends etc. But, more about the daily routine later.

Keep the motivational support coming, it’s great and heartwarming to hear from all of you!

See y'all!