Frank and Josie's House

Several people shared this with me. They know me so well! Anyone else finding life extremely surreal at the moment? I am for sure. I’m contacting my family back home all the time because I’m worried about them and feel so far away when the ridiculousness of it all is that I can’t be in contact with them right now for fear of spreading this horrendous virus. COVID-19 seems to have taken over all our lives completely. The strangest thing for me (after watching the U.K. following Italy, France and Spain into lockdown) is that Japan seems so calm about it all. Too calm for my liking. I have my own opinions as to why but mainly I think it’s being played down due to the Olympics. Hopefully with the postponement of the Olympic games having been decided they will have no reason to pretend life is normal and start taking this all seriously. Much mixed opinions are circulating amongst the expat community here. Some feel we’ve dodged a bullet, some feel we’re not out of the woods yet. It’s true t

So online learning has begun thanks to the coronavirus! In fact it began over a week ago. I have to say that I’m so proud of my older two kids. Being in grades 6 and 5 (or for those in the U.K. years 7 and 6) they’ve been given a lot of responsibility to moderate themselves.  Our eldest just gets on with it, but she’s a self-confessed bookworm and has made sure that all of her free time is taken up finishing the Harry Potter series or looking up theories on Harry Potter. Also, Hermione Granger is her role-model. Could be worse, eh? J.K. Rowling has done most of the work for me in terms of the importance of knowledge, friendships and strong women. We’ve all been made to take the ‘Which house are you in?’ test and are all a mixture of Gryffindors (the husband, eldest and middle child) and Hufflepuffs (myself and our smallest). The eldest loves that her 2nd closest house was Ravenclaw “I am just like Hermione because everyone says she should be in Ravenclaw”. It’s made us all think about