Quarantine

Everyone has their own personal COVID stories. For me, it will be that I spent 2 weeks quarantined in a college dormitory in South Korea.

You fall into a routine pretty quickly. The robot lady over the loudspeaker keeps time for you: 9am) morning meal, 10am) morning temperature check, 12pm) afternoon meal, 5pm) evening meal, 8pm) evening temperature check. Rinse and repeat. It's hard to give updates on my life yet because this has been a majority of what I've been doing for the last week and a half, but here are some fun anecdotes:

1. The second day of quarantine we were called floor by floor to get COVID tested. This was the first and only time that I got to see anyone else in the facility face-to-face. I remember when we were finished and heading back to our rooms I called out "see you in 2 weeks", half joking, half internally crying.

2. The next day, we got an announcement to come down to the lobby for a COVID test. It seemed strange that they would test us two days in a row, and also that they would call everyone down at the same time, so I didn't leave my room right away. It turned out that the announcement had been a mistake. One of the other teachers apparently started to head downstairs as instructed, but when they left their room we got another announcement along the lines of, "There has been an unauthorized escaped from the quarantine facility! Please return to the quarantine facility." Korea doesn't mess around with COVID.

3. I've been fortunate enough to have daily Zoom calls with the rest of the EPIK teachers in our Jeollanam region. It's nice to have a chance to meet people in-place of doing a full orientation. There will be an abbreviated orientation in a new location once we leave quarantine, but I'm still not sure if we'll be able to leave our rooms outside of scheduled events.

4. The food is good but not great. I mostly just wish I had a microwave. We have to wait until the food cart has passed our door before we can pick up food, so after sitting outside in the Korean winter for a few minutes it loses most of its warmth. I've also eaten through my supply of cereal. And I want chocolate. Sad day.

5. Twice a day we have to take our armpit temperature and put it into a special app that was installed at the airport. We also have to write any symptoms that we may be experiencing. One of our group members lovingly referred to this as "armpit o'clock".

6. I have been trying to work on writing while I'm in quarantine. The problem is that being trapped in one room all day really kills my creativity. I hope that once I'm settled in I can go for some outdoor excursions to do more writing, like I did back in California. I want to experience as much of the country as I can in my time here.

7. It snowed for the first time yesterday.

One final note, I hit 8k MMR in Hearthstone Battlegrounds! I still manage to play a lot even though I don't work at Blizzard anymore. Sadly, one of the only people who will care about this news is no longer with us. I found out yesterday that one of my former co-workers, the one who trained me to test Battlegrounds, recently passed away. I was so sorry to hear the news, I spent all day yesterday thinking about him. Dan welcomed me to the team with open arms, and we hit it off right away talking about Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering. He was always supportive of me and tried to get me involved with the team. Even after I made the abrupt decision to leave the team he reached out and congratulated me. He'd been on the team since Hearthstone first started, so needless to say, the game would not have been the same without him. I wish I could have had a chance to meet him once in-person.

Here's to you, Dan! I miss you, buddy.