COVID-19 with kids, Panama edition
Well, hello, there! It is has been a very, very long while since I've posted - many things have changed. Annika just had her third birthday, Maya is 6 and in kindergarten. I just successfully went through my third year review as an Assistant Professor and have been renewed until I go up for tenure. Husband is on sabbatical, so we moved the entire family to Panama for 6 months for a lovely, work/collaboration-filled sabbatical with some of the top thinkers in the world, complete with the cutest little school for the girls touting opportunities for immersive Spanish. There is even an absolutely amazing swimming pool (like 5 star, at the hotel that receives a zillion European and American tourists) that looks like it jumped out of a postcard and for which we just bought a $500 annual membership!
Cue screeching tire sounds.
We have been in Panama since January 10th and were just now really getting into a groove with both work and kids (although I had to fly back to the North Country once for a student thing for a couple of days, which totally messed up my flow for way longer than it should have). Schools shut down here last Monday night, and I have precisely zero hope that they will reopen before September (did I mention that I just paid all remaining tuition in full on March 1?). The kids have been bouncing off the walls for a week now, tripping from tantrum to tantrum (I skyped with my local scientific host yesterday afternoon - which felt weird because I can practically see her house from mine, and she was in it - and her 11 year old was bringing her melon smoothies while my kids tantrumed like devil spawn). We are about to start running the house the way we run a destination field course for 18 year olds: no child has a moment of free time, chock-a-block full of educational excitement, so there's no opportunity to get into trouble! I've been in constant communication with North Country University, and especially the students/postdoc/tech in my very full lab, and managing their mega anxieties in moving to remote formats for things that well, aren't really remote.
But the big stressor has been the week of intense discussions with husband about whether to a) leave immediately, four months ahead of schedule, or b) stay here and wait it out. Factors actually being discussed: non-zero probability of wholesale collapse of the US as we know it, agonizing decisions about what actually keeps our parents most safe (not being in a room with us, that's for sure) and what the best kind of support looks like for them under all scenarios, whether the more responsible quarantine is literally no plane travel at all (I think it is), whether spread in the tropics will be as bad as the temperate zone or not because of heat and humidity, what happens if we overstay our visas and become refugees because the US is actually *worse* in July than now ($60 fine for first offense), relative risk of having children access overburdened healthcare systems in either country for things that have nothing to do with COVID (if the hospitals are a disaster and covered in COVID, what happens when your devil spawn tantrumer just needs extensive stitches?). Actually, one of the things that helped make our decision is that the Johns Hopkins hospital in Panama City, which is private and allowed to make these sorts of choices, is refusing all COVID cases so that they can continue to provide care for all the rest of the things that people need. Long story short (because devil spawn are awakening and beginning to jump on the bed, spurring those stitches nightmares for me), we are staying put in Panama to ride it out - but husband is not 100% sold on this idea, so it, like 100% of our lives these days, is subject to change on a daily basis.
I will update with photos in a bit - we've really been having a blast here :)
Cue screeching tire sounds.
We have been in Panama since January 10th and were just now really getting into a groove with both work and kids (although I had to fly back to the North Country once for a student thing for a couple of days, which totally messed up my flow for way longer than it should have). Schools shut down here last Monday night, and I have precisely zero hope that they will reopen before September (did I mention that I just paid all remaining tuition in full on March 1?). The kids have been bouncing off the walls for a week now, tripping from tantrum to tantrum (I skyped with my local scientific host yesterday afternoon - which felt weird because I can practically see her house from mine, and she was in it - and her 11 year old was bringing her melon smoothies while my kids tantrumed like devil spawn). We are about to start running the house the way we run a destination field course for 18 year olds: no child has a moment of free time, chock-a-block full of educational excitement, so there's no opportunity to get into trouble! I've been in constant communication with North Country University, and especially the students/postdoc/tech in my very full lab, and managing their mega anxieties in moving to remote formats for things that well, aren't really remote.
But the big stressor has been the week of intense discussions with husband about whether to a) leave immediately, four months ahead of schedule, or b) stay here and wait it out. Factors actually being discussed: non-zero probability of wholesale collapse of the US as we know it, agonizing decisions about what actually keeps our parents most safe (not being in a room with us, that's for sure) and what the best kind of support looks like for them under all scenarios, whether the more responsible quarantine is literally no plane travel at all (I think it is), whether spread in the tropics will be as bad as the temperate zone or not because of heat and humidity, what happens if we overstay our visas and become refugees because the US is actually *worse* in July than now ($60 fine for first offense), relative risk of having children access overburdened healthcare systems in either country for things that have nothing to do with COVID (if the hospitals are a disaster and covered in COVID, what happens when your devil spawn tantrumer just needs extensive stitches?). Actually, one of the things that helped make our decision is that the Johns Hopkins hospital in Panama City, which is private and allowed to make these sorts of choices, is refusing all COVID cases so that they can continue to provide care for all the rest of the things that people need. Long story short (because devil spawn are awakening and beginning to jump on the bed, spurring those stitches nightmares for me), we are staying put in Panama to ride it out - but husband is not 100% sold on this idea, so it, like 100% of our lives these days, is subject to change on a daily basis.
I will update with photos in a bit - we've really been having a blast here :)
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| The girls wearing their traditional Panamanian polleras, as required for their school festival right before Carnival holiday. ¡Que linda! |
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