Quarantine Diaries - Week 1

Monday 23rd March - Sunday 29th March

I'm spending quarantine at home with my family. This includes my Mum, Mum's partner, my brother (21) and my youngest sister (13). I don't have my own bedroom at the family home anymore which means I'm sharing a room, and a double bed, with my sister. This is how I spend my university holidays too so it's not a new concept, however, I usually stay out a few times a week which I now cannot do.

Honestly, the first week in quarantine wasn't so bad. My little sister is now doing home school so it provides a useful timetabled structure to my day too as I currently don't have any teaching from the university.

I had a few lectures which I had missed during term 2 for various reasons and so I started the week by tackling two of those on Monday. I also helped my Mum with some baking - we made banana and nut bread - and I made up a batch of seitan (meat substitute). In the evening I cooked a meal for my family - fried rice stir fry. I spent the evening with my little sister and we played some minecraft on her xbox, which honestly I'm still very slow at!

On Tuesday morning I tackled another two lectures before lunch. After lunch I set up our USB microscope and my sister and I had a look at some plant cells and talked about their features. I spent the rest of the day having a sims 4 marathon. I've been working on an underground quarantine bunker in Strangerville.

Wednesday morning I did some work on Duolingo. I usually do this before bed but I was feeling motivated that day! I'm currently studying two languages: Italian, which I have been learning for a few years; and Japanese, which I have just started a few months ago in preparation for my Brother moving out there.

 


While I was feeling motivated I worked through another two lectures. On Wednesday afternoons my sister finishes school about an hour earlier so she has kindly agreed to let me work through my clinical skills with her for an hour on Wednesdays. I also roped my Mum into marking me with a scoresheet I made from our OSCE crib sheets. I actually found it to be a really useful little session. I treated myself to Planet Zoo for my PC while it was on sale and so I spent a couple of hours starting it off before I had a test call with my tutor group on Microsoft teams. I then continued playing it after dinner.

Early on Thursday morning my Mum finished my Harry Potter Marauders' Map jigsaw I've been working on for 6 months! It was worth figuring out how to bring it home from university in the car!

When I got up I happened to mention to my Mum about a fleeting thought I'd had before bed the night before about moving the patio furniture down into the sunshine in the garden and giving it a fresh coat of paint, as the paint it had when we acquired it was starting to look quite sad. To my surprise she agreed and we got started straight away.

After this, in our infinite wisdom, my Mum and I thought we could paint the side of the duck house to match and it would look like a lovely beach house.

By the end of the day they were looking fresh and ready for spring/summer.

On Friday morning the weather was nice again and Mum and I wanted to add some detail to our beach hut!

After lunch I played some more Planet Zoo until dinner, and then I ran a hot bath and chucked in a lush bath bomb I'd been saving - Sakura. It had a beautiful smell but was very anticlimactic as it simply dissolved. No whizzing around, glitter or colour. I settled into the water with a brand new book.

Having read another book of this style by the same author I was fully expecting the story to be dark and disturbing, and it delivered. However, it was less disturbing than I expected, and I have to say I was relieved! It was a brilliant read, I couldn't put it down and finished it around 11.30pm the same night!

Over the weekend we baked some more, I skyped my friends from university, and spent most of the time playing games ... a fairly normal weekend for me! Topped it off by cuddling one of our ducks.

Thanks for reading!
Katherine x


Running Totals

Lectures - 6
Tutored hours - 0
Hours reading around - 0
Clinical practice hours - 1
Hours working on essays - 0
Total hours - 6

Books read - 1
Total pages - 318
Total hours - 5

Online fiction stories read - 1 chapter
Total words - pending
Total hours - 1

Films watched - 0
TV series episodes - 0
Total hours - 0

Hours on Sims 4 (approx) - 12
Hours on Planet Zoo - 17
Hours on Parkitect - 0
Hours on Cities Skylines - 0
Hours on Minecraft (approx) -8
Total hours - 42

Hours spent outside - 7
Hours of exercise - 0.5