Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Our Week 2020

Every year we like to put together a video of what a typical week looks like. Every year it feels boring and a little tedious, just like the year before-to the point where it never feels important. But the truth is, we love going back and watching all of them (links for: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019), so we continue to persevere with this project.

We have always made the videos at the end of January/beginning of February, right after Lunar New Year. Usually nothing special is going on, so it really captures typical. This was the plan for 2020 too. Then you know what happened. There was no "after Lunar New Year" there was just "lockdown".

After waiting and waiting for things to return to normal, we decided to just make the video anyway. There have been some changes over the past few weeks and some of that shows up in the video. School opened but just for grade 9. Jim has been going into work in a very strange, largely empty building. Some restaurants are open and skateboarding class has started again.

A lot is still very abnormal. The walls are still up and there is a constant sense that we may go back to lockdown at any time. There is still a lot of repetitive working at the dining room table, watching Price is Right, and playing video games. But for now this video is a glimpse of what things are like at the moment.

Grace and Ruby are in 7th grade, August in 4th. Jim is teaching History and Economics and Irish is doing the same job, and is also back in school starting work toward a doctorate at the University of Illinois. And this is what late April 2020 in Tianjin was like for the most part for the Farleys:

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