With the shutdown of schools due to COVID-19, things have certainly become interesting. Doing online school to finish another year, not being allowed out of my house, and limited grocery and item shopping has made life weird to say the least. Although, weird is not necessarily bad, and one thing I’ve been able to do with all my time stuck at home is CAS. While yeah, it’s obviously not the same as what I was doing while at school, I’ve found that there are plenty of ways to continue doing creativity, activity, and service. In this post, I’d like to show what I’ve been up to during quarantine.
In terms of creativity, I’ve had a ton of things to do. With all this time and not much to fill it with, I’ve been motivated to learn plenty of new creative skills and develop the ones I have further. Recently, I’ve been helping my mom when it comes to baking things like bread or cooking dinner every now and again. While I’ve always enjoyed certain cooking activities like grilling meats, it was a fun challenge to try and learn the many subtle nuances of making bread. I’ve also been getting a ton of practice in on my euphonium, although I miss concert band a lot. No matter how much I practice, it’s not like I can capture the sound of playing in a good sized band with other people. With any luck, we’ll get to play together one more time this year(for graduation if we’re lucky) and I’ll get to actually have a final concert of high school.
Activity is probably the hardest category to keep going when it comes to quarantine CAS. Luckily, embassy staff and family members have a recreation facility that they are allowed to visit, which has a tennis court and pool. I go to work out there every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 6:15. I usually run around the tennis court for about 40-45 minutes before doing a quick swim workout. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a pretty tame workout but it keeps me active which is what’s important. I also do push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups around my house intermittently, but I know I need to make better schedule and plan for doing those. I plan to continue this routine for physical exercise until the quarantine ends, though maybe I’ll switch it up if I get bored of it.
Finally, service. Doing service while under lockdown is a little tricky, since I’m obviously not meeting with my service group every Thursday afternoon. Instead, I focused on doing service for the people I’m living with. That means helping out around the house for cleaning, cooking, or generally whatever. I’ve been trying to look for ways to help my parents and do my part in making curfew less stressful for our family.
That does it in terms of what I’ve been doing recently. Curfew and quarantine is certainly a challenge to deal with, though it really isn’t that bad. Things like CAS have been helpful in preventing me from going crazy out of boredom, and all the activities here are things that are quite enjoyable to do(with the exception of early morning exercise). With the end of senior year drawing nearer, it sure is a weird way to end my final year of high school.