April 10, 2020

I couldn’t sleep so I made this at 1:30 am. I used mostly watercolor and some colored pencil. I had some watercolor paper that I bought a couple months ago and I wanted to use them, so I made a sunflower.

April 10, 2020

This was the first week of online school and it actually went kind of well. Every day, my teachers posted our assignments on Google Classroom and an update letting us know what was going on. I finished my tasks in the morning, and if I had questions, I’d join Zoom sessions, but most of the time I didn’t. The one thing that wasn’t easy was finding everything like emails, morning announcements, etc. I had to ask a bunch of different people to find where I needed to go on the first day. That was probably because I’m blind, so that was really a me problem, but still. Anyways, everything else was smooth and all my assignments were easy, so I’m not as mad that we’re back in school as I thought I was going to be. Still not happy tho.

4-8-20

Online school has gone well so far. I was happy to be able to see my friends during the zoom calls. Even some of my friends are going to be making zoom meetings for us to see each other and talk. Just today our governor has decided to close down schools for the rest of the school year. I was so shocked to find out. I was hoping to be able to go back to school by probably May or something. Of course now my mind is asking, “ what are we going to do for graduation?” I won’t be able to see my friends physically and only over zoom. I knew things were going to get worse with the Coronavirus since the United States didn’t react the way we should’ve. My mind is all worried with me thinking how life will be after this is over. Or if we will have to start freshman year with online school. Things are just getting too crazy for me and I want this to get better. 

4/7/20
Tuesday
Weather: cloudy

This is our new reality as we are stuck quarantined at home. I think everybody hates online school right now, but I think people are going to warm up to the fact that we don’t have another option. I think online school is better than nothing, it feels very different because there is no face to face interactions. It feels weird how we have to raise our hands in a video call to talk to teachers and how we are all trying to make the best out of this situation. I’m just glad that we can have an online school and aren’t losing our education. I never imagined that I would take part in an online school but here we are in the midst of an pandemic trying to talk to teachers over zoom.

April 7, 2020

Today is Tuesday, meaning it is the second day of online learning. Yesterday went well; all of the assignments were fairly simple and straightforward, and all the Zoom calls went better than I expected. Yesterday was a day that actually felt somewhat normal, as opposed to some of the previous days. Today, I haven’t had too many assignments yet. I worked on a video for Mr. Schiff’s class, did my Language Arts work, and did some reading. It is so weird seeing how everything has changed during this time. I never would have thought that we would be doing school like this at the end of the school year. To be honest, I don’t think we will actually be going back to school on April 28th. Besides, the social distancing “rules” are supposedly going to be enforced by the government until at least April 30th. I honestly don’t know how I would feel about not going back to school at all this year; I just know it would be really weird. 

There are almost 1.4 million cases in the world right now. I try not to look at the statistics and news too much, but it’s hard. Especially when there is a number that big. There are over 1 million currently infected patients, almost 80,000 deaths, and almost 300,000 recoveries. The U.S. has over 385,000 cases, and Spain’s numbers are growing super quickly. China, the original epicenter, is doing really well, and Italy is getting better. New York has over 138,000 cases, and New Jersey now has over 44,000 cases. Oregon hit 1,000 cases, and we have 29 deaths. Lane County now has 30 cases, with one death. 

My family and I have been doing our best to keep busy. During the school week, we are doing school everyday for a while. Then, we usually go on a walk, eat dinner, and then we all do our own thing at night. I have been trying to read a lot as well. (Right now, I am reading Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, and it is really good so far.) I am glad to be back “at school” because it gives me more to do during my day, and it gives me more of a structure to my day, which is nice. I am really grateful for all the staff and teachers for all the work they have been doing because I am sure it cannot be easy.

4-7-20

My first week of online learning was very interesting. It’s a lot harder to be able to focus while I’m around all of my siblings. My first week was also difficult because I felt like I was bouncing from one subject to another. Sometimes I was ahead on class work and I would move onto my next class but the teacher had not posted the assignments yet, so I would bounce around subjects. Online school felt a lot more confusing but at the same time it felt nice to do school at home. 

I miss seeing all of my friends in person and just being able to see someone that is my age. I think that through being forced to stay home, I have grown closer to my family. So instead of lots of arguing between me and my siblings, we have friendly interactions and we look out for each other. Online learning is a completely different experience than going to school, but I think that online learning will work out.

4-6-20

Today was the first day of online school. I was honestly kinda nervous to do online school since I feel I would learn better with a physical teacher, rather than having the assignments given to us with not that much explanation. Good thing that today was only a check up day and next week there is going to be new concepts given to us. First period went well and I had to learn how to use the zoom app since I had never used it before. 2nd period didn’t go that well for me. I wasn’t able to find the classroom code in my email and there was no separate post on google classroom for the zoom code. Finally I was able to find the code on a post that was really long and wasn’t put down until the bottom of the post. I joined and didn’t miss much of the meeting anyway. I didn’t have a 3rd period since I was a T.A so I was able to chill and do other stuff while I waited for 4th period. I was looking forward to 4th period since most of my friends were in 4th period and I was able to see them. 5th period was mostly a selected few talking but it was still interesting because people started to show their pets which was cute. 

In 6th period things were really interesting. During regular school, the class is usually loud and goofy and things didn’t change. The class would at times talk at the same time since they didn’t mind to mute their microphones. Some of the classmates were joking around and the teacher didn’t seem to mind since the classmates weren’t doing anything too bad. So my 6th period was entertaining for me and the teacher wanted to do a show and tell tomorrow so that will be fun to watch. 

3/31

Today was fun. I woke up to my sister jumping on me. After jumping on me to tell I woke up she said get ready we are going on a run. After I fell back to sleep and then my sister jumped on me more we went on a run which was really fun. During the run we stopped at Gilham for a swing break, at least that’s what my sister called it. Eventually we got home and then I took a small nap. Then I met a friend at the park but we had to stay six feet apart the whole time which was sort of annoying. After hanging out with him I went home and we ate dinner. Me and my family after dinner went to DQ for ice cream, and instead of going straight home we went on a ride which was really fun. 

3/31/2020

I’ve been waiting a long time but finally my baby sister was born yesterday evening, her name is Gabriella and is the cutest baby ever. My other little sisters are kinda shocked there is a tiny, tiny baby in our house, and now they don’t really want to do anything except look at the baby that is way smaller than them. I’m glad my parents are back from the hospital because being stuck with my grandma for just 1 day is too much for me and she is always doing something, and she does something I always have to help. But now my parents are back and I can be super bored again.