48: SCHOOL UPDATE FROM CHINA - To Return or Not to Return? Covid-19 Coronavirus

Hey! We are in Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia, which is... Wow, that must be a far-off place. I've never heard of that before. Yes, it is. Is that on the planet Earth? It's on the island of Borneo, but Borneo is made up of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei, and we are on the west, northwest coast of Borneo. Homo the proboscis monkey and the orangutan and lots of other things. It's beautiful. It's very much jungle-y. We're here to talk about China. Many of you think you have asked us for an update, so we apologize for it being as long as it has. We have been working from afar with e-learning. Our school started e-learning across the provinces, and the Chinese government has restricted education to just e-learning, not allowing the students or the faculty to return to school. So we've been busy with that over the last few weeks, and so we apologize that we haven't had the time to give you an update. I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, I'd like to take this chance to apologize. But we're ready to give you an update today. The last time that we spoke to you, I believe we were talking about a tentative date of March 2nd to go back to school. But this past week, the government, the Shandong Education Bureau, sent out a communication that said that schools are not permitted to go back into session on the 2nd, as we had hoped, or after February is what they had said. And Shandong is our province. It's like a state in the United States, and that's where Qingdao is. But they did continue to mandate the use of e-learning and the requirement to communicate and to continue learning with students through the means of using the internet, which has been its own challenge. Finding the proper platforms, the internet speed in China with a billion kids and parents on the internet has been challenging. And the quarantines. Everybody's on the internet. And quarantines. Everyone's self-quarantined. So what else are you going to do but to play on the internet? So that has really been a stressor on their system. But we have been successful over the last few weeks to bring some education to the students. Well, and another thing is maturity level. Self-motivation of high school students to get on there and to really work at it. It's different. Learning online. And it's a challenge for the teachers. It's its own special skill, teaching online. So there's a learning curve for both, wouldn't you say? Absolutely. So a little advice to the United States. I know many of you have been emailing, especially some tech directors that have said that they're getting on alert for, they're being alerted and on call for having the possibility of changing to e-learning at any moment. And I would just say, pick your platform very carefully. Make sure that you are very clear about what online learning looks like for faculty, for students, and for parents. And put those documents out there for the community to read and ensure that everyone is in agreement. Because without that central understanding, it could really impact the effectiveness of learning and just understanding for the entire community. Good point. Hey, let's do a magic trick for everybody real quick. Okay. One, two, three. A lot of you have been asking what's going on on the ground in Qingdao or in China in general. And our friends that are there have said that they are really bored. They have all been on self-containment, not mandated, unless they have just flown into Qingdao. Yeah, that's a recent thing. Happened, yes, very recently. And the reason why is because South Korea had the outbreak. And in Qingdao, we have many South Koreans who reside. And when the outbreak occurred, a number of Japanese as well as South Koreans flew into Qingdao. And until that point, Qingdao as a city was very stable with very few cases of the coronavirus. And now that there's this massive influx of foreigners, the Qingdao government is very nervous. So they have put some new regulations in place where anyone flying in now is on a pretty strict two-week quarantine. Hey, babe, tell them about if you fly in from Seoul, what happens? Well, from what we hear, we don't know officially, but they say if you fly in from Seoul, they take everyone. First of all, you're not allowed off the airplane without everyone being temperature tested. If anyone on the aircraft has a temperature above normal, they take the entire aircraft and move you into a hotel. And you are there under surveillance for two weeks and you can't leave. So that's what's happening from Seoul. From other locations. Sorry to interrupt. So if we're flying back, we're going to buy one of those temperature things, right? Thermometer. And we're going to go around and test everybody before they get on that plane. Yes. And we're going to have a huge bottle of Tylenol and we're going to hand them out. Exactly. So if you're fine, what we've heard is if you're flying in from anywhere else and there are no temperatures on the airplane that are above normal, then everyone, I assume, can go home. But when you get home, depending on your building, perhaps, or depending on how management handles things, you could be quarantined for 14 days. So friends of ours, a friend of ours returned on Wednesday and had no quarantine. And then two friends returned today and they have a hard quarantine of 14 days. Cannot leave their house. They had to sign some documents. They had to sign documents and they had to agree that they wouldn't leave the premises. So there would be stricter measures. Well, we don't know exactly, but they want to comply with what the government has requested, of course. So it's for the betterment of everyone if that's the case. Sure. But it's a shame because we're in a location that doesn't have the outbreak. So if we fly back, we're with a group of people that have not been exposed. And yet when we get back, the potential is we would have to undergo a 14 day quarantine. So doesn't really make going back all that enticing as you can imagine. Kind of house arrest. A little bit of house arrest. Yeah. Plus we would be mandated everywhere we go to wear a mask. If any of you, and I'm sure you haven't worn a mask very long, but if you wear a mask, you know how uncomfortable it is, how frustrating it is to have it on, how it hurts your ears, how it pinches your nose if you actually wear it correctly. It is totally uncomfortable. So the motivation to actually leave the house, it's itchy, you sweat under it. If you wear glasses, it actually fogs up your glasses because of the air going being released. We have some options that we're faced with at this point. We are going to fly to Kuala Lumpur to put us in a better position to fly back to Qingdao at some point. Option two, the US government, the CDC, all tell us not to fly to China, not to go to China. And if every time I go to the page kayak or any of the other booking sites to book a flight to China, it very clearly stipulates that you should not be going to China unless it's absolutely necessary to go there. You know, it reminds me of a sign, don't touch the stove, it's hot, right? You read it many, many times and then you touch it and it burns you, right? We are hoping not to touch the stove and to remain in Malaysia. Or if we do, we won't get burned by it. Correct. Or return when things have relaxed a little bit more and we think we're heading to a better place where schools are more likely to begin. At this point, there's no announcement for the opening of schools. Living in Malaysia is very easy. We have everything that we possibly could need. We can live here for our next apartment is $16 a night with all the amenities that you could ever want or ask for. And then food is really inexpensive as well. So we could be living here for under $25 a day, which is reasonable, completely reasonable. And yeah, and certainly makes the financial burden or it makes it not be a financial burden for us. So we can be here for the long term and be wise about our spending. You know what? You're doing a great job, sweetie. We wanted to just add a couple of things about living abroad and being nomadic and some of the great things about it and some of the challenges. So I'll start with some of the challenges. We lose things every time we move from one location to the next. No matter how much we tear apart a room to ensure that we've gotten everything, we seem to always lose something. Or we'll misplace them in a funny place in our bag or something like that. And we end up finding it six months later. Like we donate to every hotel that we go to or Airbnb. There's no chance of getting it back once you're gone. We run out of items like prescriptions or I love power bars, power bars, zip fizz. For those of you who know me, I do zip fizz every day. I have not been on zip fizz for a couple of weeks, which is just heartbreaking. But you're through the cold turkey already. But I'm through the cold turkey, so I'm doing okay. We both need haircuts and I desperately need some color in my hair. The grays are coming through. Look at this bright wig right here I've got going. Thinking about if it's a few more months maybe doing dreadlocks. What do you think? Absolutely. I think that would look awesome. Sorry mom, I don't think you'll like that. Until this week we had to do our laundry ad hoc in a bathtub in a sink and that was not ideal. But this week has been glorious. We've had a washing machine, we've had a refrigerator. It has been amazing. Airbnb is the best, so we're really happy about that. Unfortunately, they're not sponsoring us right now. No. And also, you know, just sometimes we wish we could make a salad or just something simple. Anything else that's hard being exiled and nomadic? Sunburn during winter time. I know the world's smallest island is playing for us right now, but yeah, that's getting a little edgy. It's really hot here. But life is really hard. It's hard. It's hard. No, I don't think so. Okay, let's talk about easy things. We love not using a VPN. It is the best thing ever. We can get on the internet and go to any website we want and we are not controlled or monitored. It is fabulous and the internet speed is lightning fast here. So we are able to get so much more done and be more efficient, more effective because we don't have a VPN. It's glorious. Absolutely amazing. We have stores all around us. We're right on top of a massive mall and the mall has everything and anything we need. We have the freedom to come and go as we please. Two swimming pools. We don't need to wear a mask, goggles, and gloves to go anywhere. Warm temperatures, beautiful palm trees, just time together that we get that we're not distracted by the things that we have in our home or the tasks that await us when we get back. We're thankful that we're healthy. We're meeting a ton of people, a lot of teachers in the same situation that we're in who are nomadic as well and it's just been fun kind of commiserating and just having a bond with them because we're all in the same situation. So that's been really pleasant and we're really grateful for this time in Malaysia. The people here have been amazing. The food is absolutely outstanding. Yeah and the meal calls. You can fill up a plate with delicious Malay home cooking like your Malaysian grandmother that you don't have just cooked for you and it's like two to three dollars. Yeah. And the food's delicious. It's very Indian-esque. Yeah. And we love Indian food. We're overdosing on roti and naan and Indian food. And when it gets really tough we can go to the BK Lounge. That's Burger King. Why? Because the french fries are so much better than McDonald's. Comment down below if you agree with me. One of the great truths in life, isn't it? Yeah. We're just here to speak truth and love. Thank you Burger King. So don't feel sorry for us. We are doing great. We're healthy. We're happy and other than a big decision that's weighing on us as to when we go back, really everything is fine here and Borneo is beautiful. Put it on your list of places that you want to travel to. You'll see several videos coming from us in the next few weeks about our travels here so make sure to see those. Do you want to talk a little bit about the situation? How uncertain it is. How nobody really knows when this thing's going to end. Yeah I think and how it creates a tension both on our part and school's part, the government's part and we're all kind of tense because we're in uncharted territory. I mean sure there was SARS 10 years ago but a lot of people haven't been through it and this is a little bit different and there's people's safety and their education that's in play right now and the schools are all thinking well we're paying these teachers but they're not in China but there's no reason for us to be in China because we don't have any kids there. Yeah but we don't want to go back because of the quarantine issues and sure if we knew we're going to be teaching in two weeks we would go back for the two-week quarantine but who knows. I mean it could be could be mid-April before we go back. So Japan has closed its schools for a month, Hong Kong, Mongolia, many places have closed the schools. I think the greatest morale drop was thinking we could go back on the second, go back to school on the second of March and then that being delayed again I think was very very hard on a lot of teachers. I was talking to one of my friends who's the head of school in Qingdao and he was just saying that they were really hopeful and that announcement just deflated them and it's having to re just reset your set your expectations. I would much rather be back in Qingdao right now teaching because it's a lot easier teaching in a classroom setting than it is online and I just love the kids and the interaction that we have and seeing their faces and you just don't get that. Yeah the amount of hours that teachers are working is far greater now. It is. Because students are in touch with them 24-7 by WeChat and by messaging because they're not understanding something or they have to chase them down because they're not turning in assignments or showing up on on the live broadcast and in school you can chase them down much more easily but here there's it's you know when you're not seeing them it's much more difficult. Yeah we're having a great time in Malaysia but don't get us wrong we would still rather be back and have things absolutely yeah yeah we wish we were back at be good for everybody but it's not and it's creating tension and we're we just have to have a lot of patience and a lot of grace getting through this and we're all going to get through this and we can say we're not dead by then hey we were in China or associated with China when the coronavirus broke out so part of history. We'll keep you updated this week as we make our decisions as to whether we return or when not whether when we return and we'll drop you another video of course when we do return we will try and get as much video as we can of our experience on the plane and landing and all of that to let you see what's happening on the ground so until then thanks for your support and your encouragement and your constant messages and concern for us we really appreciate it and we love you all. Yeah thanks for watching the Blown Away channel we really appreciate you guys make sure you comment and stay in touch everybody and subscribe yeah yeah thanks bye