Back to School

Coming back to school from the New Year holidays has been a surreal experience. We received a few emails from our programme the day before, of which the most important one instructed students who visited Wuhan to self-quarantine for two weeks. I am not sure whether any students actually did go there, but we were all asked to fill out forms about our holiday travels. Another measure put into place was the wearing of facemasks. These past two days of school, all students and teachers had to speak in muffled voices through a layer of synthetic fabric, and also to disinfect their hands upon arriving at the building. I am not sure how tenable this will be in the long-term, as stores have been selling out of facemasks and the government has recently instructed healthy people not to deplete supplies.

The Light Fellowship has been monitoring the situation as well. These past few days, it did not seem like much was happening, as we were only asked whether we would like to continue our programs and whether we travelled to the mainland. However, by the end of the weekend we received an email saying that all but one of the Light Fellows in China had left the country, which means the people at the Light office have probably had their hands full answering questions and providing guidance throughout the process.