Jet lag. A 15 hour time difference. I don’t know what the lesser evil is here. It’s 4 am right now (1 pm for the folks back home). If that tells you how it’s going. When we lived in Japan, the time change took some adjusting to... but it hits different with a kid. I guess that is the one blessing of this quarantine though. There is no expectation of time spent during the day. We can nap when Brynlee does. But you also can’t let her sleep all day. What to dooooo…. I will say Bryn has taken it like a champ, per usual. And even now, she is just laying in her crib. She wakes up, whines a little until she finds Marcel, her stuffed monkey. Then she just lays there. I can’t say I don’t relate. She woke me up… so now I’m up. But I should probably thank her. I do my best writing when everything is, well… quite.
I guess I should have prefaced this whole thing with what's going on and why we are where we are. Baseball. Oh, you thought you were making it through a blog without that word… sorry, that’s just how things work in this family. All things baseball, all the time. But anyway, we moved to South Korea! We are blessed by this opportunity. Baseball in the states is not ideal right now… for more reasons than one. But this was not something we were willing to pass up, even before the lock out and unknowns that is MLB right now. And now that we have moved here, we have to quarantine. We have been here for less than a week, and well… so far we haven’t left our quarantine site, and still love it.
Day 1: arrive in Seoul at 5:30pm (3:30 am for us). 2 hour COVID checks and customs. 2 hour drive to the quarantine site. Dinner (good stuff by the way… the food shouldn’t be an issue here!). Bed at midnight (9am for us).
Day 2: wake up call, also known as Bryn, at 6:20am. I was actually pretty impressed considering that’s like 3 in the afternoon, a whole day before, for her little body!
Day 3-7: they all run together! So, here is the modified version: NETFLIX. A lot of Netflix is being watched. Oh, and Korean Netflix has “Friends”. So I will survive here. Our total time of quarantine is 7 days. That was brought down from our originally expected 14, and then we were told officially 10, but that changed two days before we got here. So that was nice! Our quarantine site is about two hours outside of the city. There is room to go outside, and still be away from anyone, if you just can’t stand being inside anymore. I mean… it’s cold. Like 8 degrees cold. So outside is not my first choice but it is great for Tyler, because he got tired of being inside really fast since the place we are in is TINY. His head literally touches the roof in most spots. I mean, my head touches the roof in some spots. But the floors are heated. So that’s a plus! It seems crazy, because it is FREEZING outside, but there is no heater in here. Just the heated floor. And it is almost too warm sometimes. I never imagined sleeping with our windows open in single degree weather. What’s most interesting is the quarantine care package that the government provided. We each got a full box. All three of us. So in total we got like 6 jugs of water, 36 bowls of rice, 12 cans of tuna, almost 30 pouches of soup, 30 bags of ramen, and waaaaayyyy too much seaweed. Not to mention the masks, thermometers, and cleaning sprays. There are also some unknown items, to be determined, I guess.
So Thursday at noon (our time) we were let out of quarantine. We traveled by bus to the spring training facility. We get off the bus aaaand SURPRISE! My COVID test apparently came back inconclusive. So me and Bryn get to quarantine again. Yeah, you read that right. Now we are quarantined in a hotel room (which IS bigger than the quarantine house we were in… so I’m not complaining!) buuuuuut not exactly what I had planned for my first “free” night in Korea… gotcha again… first TWO “free” nights in South Korea. The food has been interesting. Not bad! But don't ask what it is… I don’t know. Honestly, I can deal with the Netflix, laying on the couch, and extra naps portion of quarantines. The worst part is the testing. I can say with confidence that up until now, since COVID came about, I had not been tested but 3 times. I have now been tested 5 times, in 10 days. And nothing about a COVID test over here is pleasant. My nose hurts. My throat is sore. But heeeeeeeeey, it is Saturday morning, and I’m done now!
When I started this post we were in government quarantine. And then I was in quarantine again. But I am finishing this post a free woman. (So excuse the tense changes throughout…). But we survived! It of course didn’t go like we expected, but really… nothing ever does! So today we took a walk to the park next to the hotel and got some fresh air! As we take on the real South Korea, from outside of quarantine… I’ll keep y’all updated on what it’s really like! Talk to y'all later, friends.
a few extra tidbits:
Yes, we have been in Korea for a week. Yes, I have only been out of quarentine for a few hours. Yes, Bryn can already confirm… McDonalds is better here! *shrug*
