We got a note this morning saying that people can go to their huertas (kitchen gardens) – I’m not sure if this is something they’ve been able to do all along, and they are just clarifying now – or if this is a new relaxing of the measures. Anyway, a step in the right direction.
It’s been confirmed this week that schools will not start again before September, however schools can open in July and August if they and parents so wish. Students will continue to get homework to do at home and teachers are giving online classes. There’s currently debate as to whether students doing the equivalent of A levels will have to sit an exam in September or if they’ll get graded using predicted results.
My student who’s an infant teacher says he is in a routine now where he sets the school work on a Monday, then speaks with the parents during the week about how to teach their children – in effect, he’s teaching the parents! The school had private areas on their website where the students can submit their classwork back, but given his students are so young, I don’t think he gets much involved there.
We weren’t able to get any flour this week, which is the first time. We’ve actually taken a look at flour mills so we can grind our own flour, but I’m not sure how easy the wheat will be to get. We’ll see. The main problem will be if I can’t feed my sour dough starter. It’s almost a year old now and is very lively, so it would be a shame if I couldn’t keep it going.
So we’ve been looking at getting flour direct from a mill and it’s not as expensive as we’d thought. In fact it works out a similar price to buying from Dia, but we have to buy 25kg sacks! It’s quite an eye opener looking at all the different types of flour available – including special churros flour!!
I wonder if we’ll see a loosening of restrictions soon. I think the hospital situation appears to be more under control now. There are some hotspots in Extremadura (one care home was infected early on), but in areas where there are less cases of the virus, I imagine could have the restrictions loosened without any ill effect. There are still tensions in Madrid and a lot of people are fearful, but I imagine that will remain the case for a while.
On a happy note, I made some ‘stay home’ colouring pages for our website and I got an email from a fire department in America thanking me and asking if they could share them with the children in their town! I am surprised and pleased when anyone takes the time out to get in touch and say thank you – but I was super surprised that a fire department did.