Finding Joy in the Time of Coronavirus

Deirdre: [00:00:00] I have to say that not doing too badly, I guess, all things considered. So the last day that I was actually physically in class was March 20th and now is what, April, May something, May… These are blending together. Can you believe now is May 15th so it’s been almost two months since we’ve been out of class and just teaching online and kind of staying home every day since March 20th so I’m doing pretty good. My husband and I had a little…. you know, in the beginning it was like, Oh, we’re always around each other because he was of course also here teaching online, but now we have a little bit of a groove. We’ve got things going fine. We often say that we’re so happy that we have the partners that we have because it’s just, it’s cool. We’re not in a strained relationship or anything. It’s fantastic actually. So we’re really grateful for that. I’m really glad the weather is better, so we’re able to go out for walks. I’m able to go out for a walk. Where I have set up in my room, in my house, I can see outside. The sunshine is there; I can see the squirrels, you know, playing around and doing their things. So it’s nice to be able to have that, not being able to go too far afield. So yeah, I’m doing pretty good. It really helps that the weather is better. If it was the dark of winter, it might be a little bit difficult. So with this whole COVID-19, totally doing okay. I was a bit of a homebody anyway, so that’s kind of fine.
Damianne: [00:01:31] It sounds like things are okay overall, even good in some cases. What’s it like when you need to get groceries? We talked a bit about that before. Last time as we were starting the interview, I think both of us experienced empty shelves when we were looking for toilet paper back then. What’s the situation like now for you?

Deirdre: [00:01:56] Going to the grocery store hasn’t been too crazy. We found the more sane grocery store in the city, so we’ve been going there to get our stuff, but so far things seem to be okay. We got to really pace ourselves for the long haul. I can’t complain. I really can’t complain. I’m working. We’re in good health. Our families are good, our families are safe, our families are still working. They’re still in good health. So, you know, we’re lucky. We’re really, really blessed and really fortunate and we know that and we recognize that. And our friends are pretty much in the same positions that we’re in. So yeah, we’re really fortunate and happy to be so, and know that we are.

Damianne: [00:02:42] We discussed last time how you were planning a trip to Africa in 2021 and you’re someone who likes to travel, generally. People keep asking me about my travel plans. Right now, all my plans are on hold and I don’t know when I will be comfortable getting on a plane again. What do your travel plans look like at the moment?

Deirdre: [00:03:06] It was a plan a little bit further in the future anyway. It wasn’t something we were planning to do like tomorrow. So our big trip that we’re planning to do or we were planning to do in Africa, it’s still there. It’s still in the back of our mind. I still having my big, giant African map now posted on my dining room wall. So it’s still something that we’re thinking about. Mozambique now is kind of on our radar to go to the archipelago and the coast of Mozambique, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen. Maybe 2022, 2023, who knows, but it’s still there. The most significant change in our travel plans were to go to Ottawa, this past, actually, it would be coming up these coming couple of weeks. Hamilton, the musical, was going to be playing in Ottawa and I had tickets to go to the musical with my whole family, and I had tickets of course, to fly to Ottawa. But then, of course, Hamilton is postponed. The ticket has been canceled for the shows. So the show is postponed until December. The flight is postpone until probably December. So we’ll see what happens there. We have plans to go to Newfoundland in August; still hemming and hawing about whether or not I’m going to do that because I don’t feel really comfortable flying to Newfoundland and the country says that they should be opening by June. Gros Morne Park, and I really wanted to go there because I have some friends from Korea who’s opened up like a cottage bed and breakfast kind of idea called the Fish Sheds, shameless plug. And so I want to go check them out and see how it was, but we’ll see what happens. I haven’t decided what to do with that trip yet. Everything else is kind of on hold. I don’t know. You know, who knows? Everything is this, you know, health is most important and not spreading the virus is the most important thing. Travel will always be around, so we’ll see.

Damianne: How’s teaching different for you right now? What’s it like for your students.

Deirdre: Online teaching is fine. The students I have are international students and they are great. I have a few students, one in Bangladesh, one in China, and one in Hong Kong, all of which had planned to come to Canada. The Bangladeshi student was already here, and then he went home for the holidays, Christmas, and then he got stuck there so he couldn’t come back. The other two students, I think, they have never been to Canada, but they’re still signed up for the language course. So it’s great to see and hear from different parts of the world how everything is happening. It is of course a little difficult to get the nuances of, you know, I teach a language through the internet, so it’s a little difficult for them to do some of the listenings or the pronunciation activities sometimes because they might not hear the clear nuances of the language. And then facial expressions, you have to really pay attention too. The hand gestures aren’t really, their body language isn’t there. So it was a little…. Some things get lost in translation. But other than that, I think everything has been okay. We’ve transitioned over to online learning pretty well, so I can’t complain about that. And everyone is a lot more patient. We’re all trying and we recognize that. So there are some challenges in terms of test taking and you know, academic honesty and things like that. But again, you just try to mitigate that by making questions a little bit more thought, a little more thinking, not just kind of, you know, true or false. So that kind of thing. So that seems to be working. My schedule is more or less the same. Teaching is going well. I do find it a little bit taxing though, teaching online for five hours a day. So I have a three hour class in the morning and a two hour class in the afternoon and then one hour lunch break, and it is kind of a bit much. It’s a lot of Zoom strain, Zoom fatigue. I’m sure you’ve heard about it all in the media and stuff. So yeah.

Damianne: [00:07:04] I’m definitely familiar with the idea of Zoom fatigue. I’ve been working remotely for almost two years now, and so all of our communication is online, mostly through Zoom and through Slack and that kind of thing. And since Coronavirus started, many people want to have more video chats, but I’m finding that I don’t actually want any more video chats than what I’m having already with work. I spend all day on the computer and I might want to connect with people, but I find the idea of another Zoom meeting and the online interaction to be exhausting at times.

Deirdre: [00:07:53] Definitely that. So when Fridays come around, I don’t have an afternoon class on Fridays, so when Friday comes around, I’m usually just ready to go to bed, like right at noon. So yeah, it’s a bit much for the brain, teaching online. I have a job. I really do and I’m healthy and my family is healthy, and so that’s most important. The biggest thing is just finding the energy to do stuff after spending time on the Internet all morning and the better part of the afternoon, like finding the time to do stuff. So I thought when all of this happened, when they said, Oh, you’re going to be teaching from home and you’re going to be, you know, online. I was like, great, it’s going to be better for me because my commute to work normally took about 40 minutes. So I was like, yeah, great. I can save all this time. No, not saving any time, not saving any time at all. In fact, I’m probably more tired now than I would be if I were in the car driving back and forth. So I have to figure out a schedule so I could be able to like get some exercise in, not just veg out on the sofa and binge-watch Sex and the City, which I’ve been doing, which I, you know, I’ll say it, I’m not ashamed. So yeah, I’ve got to figure out some things like that. But otherwise, things are great and I cannot complain.

Damianne: [00:09:16] My sister and I have been baking. We usually have dinner together and then watch something on Netflix afterwards. What’s giving you joy right now, well, besides watching Sex and the City.

Deirdre: [00:09:31] Well, I’m still able to connect a lot with my family. I think I mentioned before that I live quite a bit away from my family. They live in Ontario and I’m in Manitoba, so we’re still connecting with Zoom calls. We chat, we FaceTime with the little kids in my family who were actually teenagers and in their twenties. We text message a lot; we’re going to try this Netflix movie watching party. So that still gives me joy. And the friends that I have that are still in Ontario or in the States, we’re trying to connect a little bit more actually because of Coronavirus. So we set up a couple of Zoom chats and stuff and just kind of are talking more and emailing more and keeping more in touch actually, and these are friends that I’ve had since like high school, so that’s kind of neat. Being able to go out for walks with my husband and I like to cook a lot, so we’re experimenting with different kinds of things in the kitchen. So we’re making a lot of bread. We’ve got a bread maker before this whole thing happened, so it was kind of cool. So we have this bread maker, we’re making bread, we’re trying different flavors, different kinds of dishes, middle Eastern stuff and Mediterranean stuff, Indian stuff. Like we’re, yeah, we’re just kind of exploring.