More corona

So we're stuck in this little studio apartment which sometimes gets to me but then I think others are stuck in far worse places than this, especially in my home country South Africa.  They seem to be handling the virus well but now there is so much hunger, the queues of people waiting for food grow longer and longer and my fear is that this will cause a civil war.  People are desperate to feed their children and will revert to crime if needs be.  Lots of supermarkets have been broken into.

My view

We were supposed to fly back to SA today, 9 May 2020 but because of the travel ban, we're unable to do so.  So far there have been 3 repatriation flights out of USA  and we were considering taking one of these but it would cost us close to R50 000 as the flight alone is over R15 000 pp but only takes you to Johannesburg. Then you have to be in quarantine for 14 days and then make your way to Cape Town on your own steam.

Greensboro made free masks available so we took a walk down to the Municipal offices and got our free masks.  It's such a schlep to wear them as they mist up my specs and I struggle to breathe but we wear it when we enter a shop.  We're never really close to a lot of people at any given point in time other than in the grocery store. I think I'd do a better job than Cyril though, :-)

Mass is done via Youtube every Sunday.  We choose to watch Fr Wim at St Nicholas in Stellenbosch. We managed to set up a sort of worship table.  The desk has to stand in for all the tablespace we need so it's altar, table and desk.  An all-round work station.

So far I cannot really say that the virus has impacted me much other than the concern that I might get it and I have an already compromised immune system through Sjögrens.  We take our vitamin C's and try and get outside into the sun every day, wash our hands fifty times a day and use our masks as needed.  I guess one can't do much more than this. 

Bits and bobs

We were hoping to do Stations of the cross on the Fridays of Lent but the virus had other plans so that fell flat. Then we hoped to be able to go to mass Easter Sunday but that also didn't happen due to the virus.  Very strange feeling to be in a foreign country and the one thing that is universal, the mass, is no longer available.  At least we got a surprise Easter basket at the Caf when we went to get dinner and breakfast.  You pay $5 per meal and you get it between 4pm and 6pm.  It used to be a warm dinner, but they found people preferred warming it up when they were ready to eat it, so all entrees are cold.  You can take 10 items if you order dinner and breakfast that consists of one entree, one breakfast which is either a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit (a lot like our scones) or a ham, egg and cheese croissant, which I preferred.  Lately, the biscuits have been like rocks. Then you add things like chips, nuts, muffins, desserts and drinks to make up the 10 items.

Our Easter basket filled with goodies.

So I decided to cook for Easter Sunday but first had to do my first online order from Harris Teeter, our preferred grocery store. That went quite smoothly and as it was my first, the delivery charge was waived.  I made 'ouvrou onder die kombers', mince meat balls in cabbage leaves but I first braised some steak with onions and when it was nice and brown, packed the stuffed cabbage leaves on top.  It turned out very yummylicious. I also cooked some Irish stew and I'd bought some beetroot.  John got his yellow rice with raisins.  I didn't have tumeric but found some curry powder in the communal kitchen and used that.  We ate on these two meals for days as I froze the leftovers.  Warmed up they were even tastier. I made microwave sago pudding for dessert. 

Lunch plate.

Sago pudding for dessert.

We try and walk a bit every day for exercise because even though we bought an exercise ball, we hardly use it.  So this one day we decided to walk in a different direction and discovered this meandering river with a nice bench to sit on.  Saw some ducks and just sat and enjoyed the scenery.  Everything is so green and it was quite peaceful at the river.  We've been back once since.  Now we need to be careful of the killer hornets as we actually had one in our apartment that John had to get rid of with a towel while I stood outside.  These hornets' sting is apparently lethal.  This happened before we even knew anything about them.  It's huge and I should have taken a photo of it but didn't know what it was at the time.  I just thought "wow, even the bugs are big in USA," lol.