Quarantine, Winter 2009

If I was clever I would have photoshopped some heads on, but I am not.

Its winter holidays right now. With the kids going to an international school we have 6 weeks in June/July and 6 weeks Christmas until the beginning of the February. Most schools in Argentina have 2-3 weeks off and start the second half of the school year the beginning of August. Well this has been a kind of funky holiday for us.

Generally we have traveled during this holiday, sometimes north of the equator, sometimes here in Latin America. This year, because the oldest was going to be going to camp in the northern hemisphere for 2 1/2 weeks smack in the middle of the break, we decided to stay here and ski. There has been one problem with that plan, there is no snow. At least not in Argentina. There are some great places to ski in Argentina, Las Lenas and Cerro Cathedral are probably the best. The one problem is that they have little to no altitude, so it better be cold. In past years we have been to Bariloche twice to ski at Cerro Cathedral and have been rained out both times. So we are now looking at going to Chile to ski where there does appear to be snow. That will happen at the end of the month.

Normally this would be a great time to take the kids to the zoo, museums, the movies, shopping etc..normally kids in local schools would still be in session for at least another two weeks. But not this year. The gripe porcina (swine flu) has hit hard, or at least the government would like us to believe that. To show how responsive they are being, they close everything down. The kids are all out of school, basically until further notice. In the last week they have closed cinemas, my gym, concerts and sports events. And as of tomorrow (which is Argentina’s Independence Day, 9 de Julio) there is now a long weekend, including Friday which is a “feriado sanitario” (or health holiday) in which everyone has been encouraged to stay home, away from large crowds, with the hope to stall out the virus. It makes things very quiet around here. I never left the house today. The kids went for a walk with Corina to buy medialunas (sweet croissants) for tomorrow. Its OK for a few days..but even I, who can always be entertained by a book, could see how this will get old quickly. When GM gets back from the States we will for sure go somewhere. This would make him nuts. Either to the more immediate campo or to Junin.

Until then, more Camp Mommy. There has been a lot of Pictionary the last few days and we started a Puppy/Kitten 500 piece jigsaw. We got all the edge pieces isolated and the corner pieces identified. Then Ana, in her quest to clean every surface of humanity, stuck the puzzle back in the box. Well there is tomorrow, and the day after that, and the next day….