18 Sept: Test Day

 It has quite quickly become blindingly obvious that there is actually not enough going on in my life at the moment to write every day.  That and I honest to god can't remember what we did yesterday... Ooh I know!  We started school!  The Ministry of Education provide each of the kids with a pack that contains a homework book, a couple of exercise books, some reading, some stationary and a maths book.  Unfortunately they gave us two year 1's and a year 7.  Alex is Yr8, Owen Yr 6 and Amelia (thank goodness!) is Yr 3!  Amelia has set to work on the Yr 1 workbook, and Alex on the Yr 7 while we wait for the correct ones to arrive.  Owen is writing us an epic tale which involves Klingons and becoming a deformed centipede.  We might publish it later..  We also decided it might be time to give the boys the Razor Crest lego set they had bought before we left Canada (and didn't know had arrived)  It came with two smaller sets, so we put the small set by the TV to see how long it would take them to find it...

Anyway - that was yesterday :)

Today dawned bright with a sense of foreboding..... Our first swab.  We had primed the kids - Matt talked to them about his experience and we watched a little vid where the whole process is explained and they could see what would happen.  All we had to do now was settle in and wait!  We knew they were coming in the morning so decided to skip our morning walk.  Instead we sorted the washing.  Every three days we can swap out towels/linen and get extra tea and coffee.  Yesterday we filled in our request form and today the bags arrived.  We found a bag of clean stuff outside the door, and replaced it with the used stuff.  Pretty good system really!    We are allowed two personal washing loads within the quarantine.  Each person is allowed 10 items per wash - I guess they are not expecting us to change clothes daily and wash everything we wear!  We sorted that this morning, filled in the forms and now have 5 brown bags by the door waiting to be taken away and washed.

There came a knock on the door at about 9.30 and there they were.  Amelia was very apprehensive, so the nurse suggested she go first - get it out of the way.  She sat on a bench in the foyer and the nurse went at her - was all over very quickly and other than being a bit surprised and having slightly watering eyes, she made it through just fine.  Owen was next and was great about it.  He told me later the secret is to go in with a positive attitude :)  Alex got through fine, then me, then Matt, us standing in the doorway. We chatted a bit more with the nurses and they were about to move off when the guy who was bagging said 'uh actually wait...'  There had been some kind of error with mine and Alex's and we had to redo them!  Mine was fine - its a kind of tickly, uncomfortable, scratchy weird feeling - but Alex inadvertently closed his nostrils somehow and they had a bit of trouble....  He was not happy.  They were super apologetic and gave us all lollipops :)

Alex was a bit miserable so Matt shifted the small lego kit so it was next to Alex's deodorant and told him to go put some on.   The look on his face was priceless - the cogs turning as he figured out what it was and what it meant - the Razor Crest was in the building.  They hunted around madly and finally found it in the top of our closet.  Much frantic Lego'ing ensued!!  

We have maintained our exercise routine, done one day of school and survived our first swab.  I think we are doing ok.  The other highlight today was the pie for lunch :)  the verdict was nice pastry, but average filling.  Guess they will have to wait till we get out!