A few weeks ago, we took a tour of ISB where the kids would like to transfer to. Or at least Rhea does, and Savannah and Thomas think they do too. (Update: Since the tour, Savannah made her decision and then the morning that we had to let CISB know if we were going to reenroll, Thomas made his decision to transfer as well. We told him to pray about it and make the decision for himself. We didn't want any of the kids to feel that they were forced to go or didn't get to make the decision themselves. Despite being Thomas' senior year, he decided as well to go to ISB. Hopefully we won't run into too many walls in getting all of the classes and credits that he needs to graduate!)
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We had a nice welcome on a large screen at the main entrance.
The school was impressive! Nicole and Carole in the admissions office gave us a warm welcome and answered a lot of our questions before the tour. We enjoyed strolling through the huge and multiple theaters, music rooms, gyms, art rooms, libraries, etc. They had a large track for track and field, swimming facilities, etc. And the cafeteria had a gazillion food options, all of which looked delicious. Needless to say, CISB is nothing like ISB, and the thought of the beautiful campus, better teachers, more Americans and other foreigners, as well as friends from church, makes the kids want to transfer. Rhea will be in 9th grade, so she won't associate much with all of her friends that will be in 8th grade, but she loves the thought of having other friends on campus, especially being from church, having similar morals and values. The commute will go from 7 minutes to 1 hour, which is why we chose CISB in the first place. But it really seems that it will be worth the long commute! We will continue to learn more, but I believe we'll be sending in enrollment papers soon!
We took the tour after I helped host a CLO coffee in River Garden, but Bri took the day off. So he went to CISB and picked the kids up to get a taxi together out to ISB where I met them. The tour started at 11am and finished around 1pm, so we got back to Chaoyang Park area around 2pm. I went back to work, the kids went home, and Bri killed time until our appointment with HR at 3:30pm. We had this appointment set to talk about curtailing from China two years early. We've never curtailed before, nor have we ever thought we would curtail from a post, especially China since we just extended our assignment back in August to stay 1 year longer until 2025. However under the current Covid conditions and the intolerable Zero Covid Policy being enforced here, we can see that the uncertainties are too great and may continue for years to come. It's already been almost two years since we've been home, and it will be another year until we can leave in 2023 if we get our curtailment approved. So with all of this in mind as we walked around ISB, without knowing what thoughts the other was having, Bri and I both admitted later that we had thoughts like, "Maybe we should just stick it out until 2025 because this school is amazing." Well, at 3:15pm, right before our meeting our 3:30pm meeting with Jamie in HR to talk about curtailing, I received a text from the front desk of our Kingstone (our apartment complex). It asked if we had been to Decathlon (an REI type store) and then said that we would need to do health monitoring/take temperatures and they would create a chat group with the community leader, which is pretty much like the local government that tells you what to do and enforces Covid protocol.
And so the texts started coming in from the community leader, telling us that we needed to quarantine because of Briant and Thomas' visit to Decathlon. I found Briant waiting for me to go into HR for our meeting, where I filled him in. We ran into a bunch of HR colleagues that said we should meet with Jamie to talk about our leave forms for quarantine, and we said that we actually had a meeting with her right then. And so we met with Jamie about curtailment (of course no one at the embassy is actually worried that you've actually been exposed to Covid, it's just the Chinese), and went over what we need to do to make it happen and what we could expect for timing on the approval process. Funny how the warm and fuzzy feelings that Bri and I each had about ISB and staying in China quickly flew from our minds when we started to get these texts!
And so a camera was installed outside our apartment door for two weeks, or technically 11 days since it had already been a few days since they went shopping, so the countdown from 14 days had already begun. At first we were told that we had to find a friend to take Cocoa for the two weeks, but a few hours later, they said we could keep her and have a friend come and walk her every day. So we continued using our Ayi Sally Mon-Fri to walk her in the morning and afternoon, and then we asked friends or paid Avalon B. to walk her. I hate asking for help, especially to have people walk your dog that they aren't familiar with. So my days were filled with communicating with colleagues about certain things, buying groceries on apps, and arranging for dog walking. It's an interesting job keeping your family and dog fed and watered for two weeks without stepping outside. This took us back to our first quarantine we did here when we first arrived in China except this time, we were surrounded by our stuff. After day five though, even with a treadmill and elliptical, I was going crazy and wanted to get outside beyond our walls! I tired multiple times to reach out to GSO, who would reach out to the community leader, to argue that there was no "intersection of space and time" with the Covid case at the store. Briant and Thomas were there from 5:30pm-6:30pm, and we had store and taxi receipts to prove it, while the Covid case was there from 1:30-4pm. There was no proof of exposure, and you have to wear a mask while you're shopping anyway. So I didn't think it was unreasonable to argue for at least a shorter quarantine, especially since after multiple tests we were all testing negative. Every day we had to report temperatures twice a day as well, which were completely normal. What we've learned from being here almost two years now though is that there is NO logic in the decisions, and there doesn't seem to be a reconsideration of a decision already made (except for Cocoa staying with us). We think that most of this is because there's a fear among the community leaders that an outbreak will occur under their watch and they'll lose their jobs, etc. So all decisions are made to go to the extreme one way or another. It's all about fear. The rule following and parroting of policy and regulation comes down to fear instead of sound, rational logic. It really made no sense how different people could come to our door to walk our dog several times a day if we had Covid. If we had Covid, Cocoa probably would have had Covid or at least our Covid germs on her. If we really had Covid, then they would required every colleague, friend, shopper and cashier at stores we had been to, to quarantine also. They never asked us where we had been after shopping at Decathlon, And so the arbitrary and illogical process has really started driving us, and everyone in the expat community, crazy. It's like the street right behind our apartment complex to go onto the street. We're allowed on the street, but for some reason (control of course), we can't enter or exit the gate that opens up from our apartment directly on the street. We have to walk all the way around the neighborhood to use a gate to enter the street, and you have to go back to that gate to exit the street, instead of being able to use another pedestrian and car exit at the other end of the street, which is conveniently right next to the front entrance of our apartment. You can walk from one end of the street to the other, but you can't enter or exit the gate that is closest to where you want to go. In our minds, we're asking why they want to bring all the people to crowd at one gate to enter and exit instead of spreading us out. If it really is an issue of Covid, then they would think logically that way and decide to use multiple gates to spread the people out. I understand why maybe they want to control the scanning of people's health kits for coming onto the street to make sure everyone has tested negative. But they could require the scanning on both ends of the street. And why can't I go back home to Kingstone by using our community gate that opens right up onto Kingstone property? Why do I have to go all the way back down the street to exit through one gate with everyone else, and then walk all the way around the neighborhood to get back to the apartment that I was just staring at (where I left my groceries because they're too heavy to carry). If I had Covid, I've just spread it on the whole walk around the block. Again, lacking in logic. But the "rule followers" or enforcers just do as they're told. These gates are starting to feel like prison walls. And scanning in for contact tracing at every store and restaurant is smothering our freedom of movement and making us feel trapped. The way they force people into quarantine facilities and fever clinics is leaving me feeling sick. How can they decline to help someone needing immediate medical attention because they haven't had a Covid test in the last 48 hours? When is the logical and humane going to come or come back to China? How long is the insanity of the Zero Covid Policy going to last??? The Platts have decided that we're not going to wait around past 2023 to find out.
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