REDSTAR Hangzhou March 2020

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Wednesday 5 th
February
Friday 7 th
February
My employer has asked me to prepare online
lessons for when the semester restarts on the 24th
February, so I now have something to do. This is a
new departure for me, and I really don’t know how
to provide online lessons for 30 plus students, I
have been asking on the various TEFL Facebooks
groups and got some ideas from other teachers.
Thursday 6 th
February
The masks from the UK have been dropped off by my
friend at the pick-up point in the UK, but we are not
sure whether the delivery will get here, we will see. I was
speaking to an American friend yesterday who works
at my previous school, he was given a box of masks
as a gift before the news of the virus broke, he didn’t
want them, so he gave them to his cleaner. Now he is
improvising, using sleeping masks to protect his mouth
and nose, as he cannot find any proper masks to buy.
My wife went out to the only local shops available to us:
the small vegetable shop and the pharmacy. We were
told that the bigger fruit and vegetable market, further
down the road, was closed because of the infection. The
vegetable shop is also selling meat and milk. My wife
managed to get the last package of milk that day. This is
a box of 12 small cartons. These usually cost 30-40 RMB,
but she had to pay 60 RMB. The vegetables were double
price too, and the pork on sale is 40-50% dearer¬––clearly
some people will get rich from this crisis. The meat is
another source of infection concern, so we will not buy it.
We are now on the COVID-19 Diet, which means
rationing the booze, because in rookie error we didn’t
buy it in suitable amounts as we didn’t realise we
would be locked down. We are also having smaller
portions of food so what we do have lasts longer.
I usually have muesli for breakfast but that means
burning through the milk and I also need milk for
tea. It’s a first world problem but I’m British, and a
cup of tea just makes everything better, doesn’t it?
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