Hello From Quarantine! Oh, and We Had an EaRtHqUaKe

Wow, I don’t even know where to begin. It all seems to have escalated so quickly…

Sometime late last year/early this year China started reporting of a virus infecting a lot of people and leaving thousands dead in their country. News reports snowballed and the world went into panic mode.

Here, people started stocking up on their food… and toilet paper. I never knew so many people were scared of not being able to wipe their butts haha. But, I finally went to the grocery store last week and got some food storage items. I felt silly at the grocery store with all of the chaos happening because I thought people were over reacting. But, I thought since I have wanted to start a food storage for a while, my motivation levels were probably the highest they would ever be. I wasn’t able to get everything I hoped for like rice (or toilet paper), but I feel a little better at least.

And all this time I’ve been so worried about our planned trip to Japan in early April. People started cancelling things like crazy, the government said no gatherings of 100 people or more, then 50, then 10. They cancelled school, businesses shut down (except grocery stores and pharmacies). Restaurants are only allowed to do take out and they even cancelled church! Last week, Dave blessed the sacrament for us at home. Anyway, just today the US changed the safety level travel advisories for all countries to a level 4, which is the highest. They really want us staying home to “flatten the curve.” Italy is having a very tough time and have had so many deaths. All countries are scared that we will be hit like Italy so here we are trying to slow the spread of the virus. Luckily, Dave has been able to work from home and we just really pray that he will be able to keep his job through all of this. I’ve had some things cancel, but still have some work to do. I am optimistic that we will make it through. Plus, the government might give everyone some money, so that could be nice. But, I think it’s very safe to say we won’t be going to Japan😥

And the earthquake! If this wasn’t enough, yesterday around 7:08am Dave had just turned off his alarm when everything started to shake. It took me a few seconds to make sure it wasn’t a big truck passing our house and then I said, “earthquake?” and Dave jumped out of bed so I followed him and we stood under a door frame. In my head I said, “Please God, let us be wheat.” We definitely weren’t going back to sleep after that, so we just watched the news roll in about it on our phones. It was crazy how like 60 seconds after it happened people were already posting about it. Apparently there were about 60 aftershocks yesterday and some today too.

I can’t believe all this is happening. We were just politely going along with our life and then BAM everything stopped. I’m sad we won’t be going to Japan anytime soon and I’m nervous for what will happen this year and possibly even next. I’m glad our global community is working hard to fight the pandemic even though we are all bored in our homes haha. I hope we can find productive things to do and find ways to help others through it all! And I hope we can look back at this time in our lives and laugh.

Some pictures from quarantine below.