The above video contains sounds from our apartment complex in Beijing. The first set of sounds are what we hear when we leave our apartment to go see the grandkids. The second set of sounds are of the subway train going by. A train goes by every few minutes. For some reason I can’t get the video of this to play in the Chrome browser. It works find in Edge. The video isn’t very exciting, but if you want to see it you might want to try a browser other than Chrome.
We’ve made another transition that has made this an interesting week. The grandkids are back in school, but since they can’t physically go to their schools, they are doing all their classes by computer. Most parents only have one child in one school. We have four grandchildren in three different classes at two different schools.
Our oldest grandson has already been back in school for a week, so he has the routine figured out. What is hard is sitting at a computer from nine in the morning until almost five in the afternoon. Most days he has homework after that. He has really been looking forward to this weekend and a chance to not have any schoolwork to do. The exciting thing for him this week was that he got to play lead guitar in a band on Friday evening. It was a virtual gathering as everyone except the band was linked in via Zoom.
The other three went back to school on Monday. Monday was close to a disaster. Our son worked very hard, but it was difficult to get all the kids on the right hardware with the right application to connect with their class. There had been hundreds of messages on how to make this all work, but they were all in Chinese. Our son does well with reading Chinese, but this was beyond his capability. Every day this week got better, and yesterday was calm. Our daughter-in-law goes back to university next week, but our son has another week before he has to go back to class. He’s hoping to have the kids independent by then.
We have begun to develop a routine. Most days we get up and watch a Warriors game on NBA League Pass. We’re finally caught up to mid-January. After that we have breakfast and then get cleaned up for the day before heading over to our grandkid’s apartment. When we arrive, I check the kitchen and wash dishes if needed. Through the day we work at our computers and stay available should any of the grandkids need help with schoolwork. We can help with math and English but are no help at all with their Chinese.
If the weather is warm and the air quality reasonable Grandma and I will take a walk either through the park across the street or around the complex. Yesterday, we walked around the complex and took pictures to provide a ground level perspective. Most of our previous pictures have been from our apartment looking down. Grandma usually cooks dinner and after dinner I clean up the kitchen. If we’ve had dinner early enough, we’ll either play a game or watch a movie before heading back to our apartment.
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