Supposedly the last week before we return

I need to finish my lesson plans for the supposed start of school next Tuesday but it is all rather hard to plan. For a start it now seems government doesn't want us to go back to classroom teaching so it looks like we'll soldier on with online but there is no indication as to how long a term I'm planning for. It feels like we are ending up having a lot more school than normal and I'm scraping the barrel for topics to cover for the estimate of end of term. I do need to do revision too as I don't know how much has gone in with some of my students but not having them face to face makes it difficult to tell if they are really understanding. Sigh, one has to just do one's best and go with the flow and not plan too far ahead (unless you're trying, "trying" to write forecasts for work). My grade 7's write their entrance exams for high school supposedly in two weeks' time, again, who knows what is going to happen, but I have to finish preparing them as best I can for that, whilst juggling my two grade 6's.

In other news, saw a few friends this weekend and went to a socially distanced mass at Saint George's Chapel this morning. Not going to tell my sister this as she feels we should be maintaining a very strict lock down with the stats coming out of South Africa. I won't tell her too that someone who attended mass at the cathedral in town was diagnosed with COVID and is now dead. The cathedral is being sanitised and they are re-thinking mass there. I guess we do have to be careful but the mass at St George's was very spread out and there were very few people there.

Was paid by my Chinese students yesterday but sadly they might not want lessons for the next month as they will be travelling around China. This is a bit of a blow as it is one of my only sources of US$ and you now have to pay for petrol in US$ not bond. We are a bit stuck with paying our gardner as my mum was paying him in US but no longer can and paying him the equivalent in bond is almost my salary. I need to pick up more work or really will have to assess if we can live here. One of the reasons government might up the strict level of lock down again is that MDC plans to have a mass protest on the 31st of July. ZANU PF may use the excuse of COVID to tighten entry into cities in the week of the protest. Things are rather dire in Zim but I am not sure what the protest will achieve.

On an end note, apparently according to a doctor, for COVID you should be taking zinc, have vitamin C, sit in the sunshine every day and take an asprin a day as COVID causes coagulation. I'm getting my sunshine with my dogs and am already taking zinc. The naartjies at the moment are really good, so there's my vitamin C.