Mons, Belgium

How tightly was Belgium locked down?

When they announced it and they said, ‘we're going locked down’, they were serious. Everything was tight. The Belgian police were issuing tickets, they set up roadblocks and they would pull you over and ask you where you were coming from, where you were going. If you were beyond one kilometer from your house and didn't have the paperwork that said you were an essential worker, you would get a 250 euro fine.

If you had more than one person in the car, you would get a fine. Yeah, so, it was tight. Nobody was going anywhere. It was quiet. If you wanted to go for a walk, you could not drive to the park to go for a walk or to a trailhead to go for a walk. You could only leave from your front door on foot or bike.

[On SHAPE’s base] Seth was at the skateboard park,  and the police came and made them leave. Dan and the boys and I were playing tennis and they stopped to make sure that we were all from the same family house, and if we hadn't been, we would have each received a 250 Euro fine. 

So if you were out and you saw the police, you better have had your documentation that you were an essential worker. And Dan had that. He has the paperwork, and it not only lists that he's an essential worker, but what roads he has to drive on in order to get to work.

Last week they [announced] you could walk with one person who was outside of your family, but you had to maintain your physical distance.
We're now up to you and four people can walk with social distancing. So that's looser. You can now have more than one in the car and you can drive up to 100 kilometers from your house, but you may not stay overnight anywhere.

We were getting orders from the US military that we weren't supposed to visit outside of our country borders. For example, if you went into Germany, Germany was requiring a two week quarantine, so you'd cross the border and you wouldn't be allowed back into Belgium. So there were warnings like that for about a week before [closures].

I think by June 1st most things will be opening. Not the gyms and things like that. Not the nightclubs, but all of the other services should be open.

So, even though things are starting to open, they aren't yet convenient. A few restaurants were doing takeaway, but not speaking French, it's hard for us to order, so we didn't bother.

How has your work been affected?

We didn't really know that we were going virtual until the day we went virtual. We didn't have any training for going online, or expectation of that. We were not given any idea how long it would last. [It was] just announced over the loudspeaker one day that when you go to your locker at the end of the day, take everything with you.

And that's how the students found out that they were going virtual. We kind of had an idea it might happen because it was happening everywhere else in the world, but it was a surprise for us. And then we had two days. Teachers had two days to come into the school and prepare ourselves, figure out a learning platform.

So it hasn't all been bad. The bad part has been, I haven't been able to get as far in the curriculum as I would like. The good has been that I've been able to not worry about being on curriculum and pacing and all of that, and really make sure that the kids are understanding the core concepts that they're going to need to be successful moving forward. 

So I've really liked that, and it's given me a chance to have some dedicated time, like one-on-one or small group time to really work on concepts that kids are struggling with. And that's not time that I usually get when we're in the classroom. 

How did you make the decision to bring Noah to Belgium?

[Noah] came home, like, March 5th, maybe.

We wanted to get him home. He called me at like two o'clock in the morning, my time, and said, ‘Mom, they just announced they're shutting school down.’

So we were talking about whether he needed to go to Seattle or come here. For a while we were like, well, you could just go to Seattle because it's just going to be a couple of weeks or whatever. Right? Not knowing. But then we decided he should come here because grandma and grandpa are older, and my mom's husband is high risk.

The same night that he called me, the president announced that they were going to do the travel restrictions and stop international flights. So I was a little bit freaking out that we might not get him home before they quit flying, but fortunately we were able to get him on a flight like two days later.

How does it feel to be in Belgium during this experience?

It's kind of sad because it's so easy to travel and everybody here seems to be like, that's their reason for being here. We had to cancel our spring break. I have friends who have to move this summer and so they had really big trips planned. I have a friend who's retiring from teaching and she can't say goodbye to her kids.

So it's just kind of really disappointing, and a sad way for some people to end their time here, you know, and things are going to be different now. We don't know what that looks like. It’s hard being this far away from family, even though I wouldn't be able to go see my mom and [my stepdad] because he is in the high risk category.

The distance is more acute. I think not being able to be closer in proximity to grandma and grandpa, even though there's nothing more I could do that I'm doing here, the distance feels more distance-y. It's more extreme now.