Mikey the Marmot

This is Mikey the Marmot. He used to go by the name Chuck, but when I moved to Brazil it was easier to have a puppet whose name starts with a common consonant, not a digraph (that’s for my teacher friends).  He has been part of all my classrooms for many years and is probably as fondly remembered by former students as I ever will be.  He is a bit impulsive, rather shy, but he has the ability to perform magic with kids.  Every time Mikey brings a new book for the class to read, chews on their pencils, writes them a letter, or creates a Mikey Mystery for them to solve, it is classroom gold.  So of course when our principal here told us to start bringing home our teaching materials every night just in case, I packed my laptop and Mikey.  Well, it happened, the governor of the Federal District closed all schools for a total of 20 calendar days, and Mikey is now living at home with us.  Friday we were looking at Mikey and all his fur and thinking about all the hands and hugs he gets every day and I started to see him more as a fuzzy little petri dish than as my sidekick.  So, not wanting to throw him into the washing machine, we did the next best thing and took him outside to soak up some nice Brazilian UV rays in hopes of doing a little corona cooking.  The girls and I bumped a volleyball around and moved Mikey from sun patch to sun patch, rotating him like a rotisserie chicken on the bag he was laying on.  Suddenly Hannah looks up and shouts, “wow, that bird is low” and we all look up and see a caracara finish what looks like a dive and start climbing back up to the sky.  

Caracaras are birds of prey from the falcon family and are really common in Brasilia.  There is even a nest we can see from our apartment window.  As common as they are, it was still really exciting to see one that close, until we realized why he had gone into a dive.  Mikey!  Like the bidet drinker, there is no absolute evidence, but the girls and I are pretty darn confident that Mikey almost got scooped by our local bird of prey.  Luckily Mikey survived the near miss and is happily living on our couch where he can just get a peek at their nest if he feels brave.

And you read that correctly (if you read Portuguese), the Federal District, our state, has cancelled all schools and public events for twenty days.  Which we fully support, except that we now are transitioning to a distance learning program, which means that our kindergarten team will be attempting to entice five year olds to do school work at home.  Day one is Monday, so I am sure updates will be added to the blog as we really get into the process.  So far, we are starting slow, just getting everyone set up and doing an activity or two each day as we ramp up.  The part that I have yet to wrap my head around is the “office hours” I will be holding twice each day for thirty minutes on a Google Hangout.  Yep, I am going to sit there while as many five year olds as want to log into the chat room and attempt to wait their turn quietly so the program does not think they want to talk yet.  And if they start pushing buttons, they can mute any other person in the video conference, or even just remove them entirely.  Should be a really interesting experiment.  I wonder if they will guess what is in Mister Adam’s juice cup, because I am going to need it.

So far, everyone is healthy with no signs of COVID-19, but we are wary.  We had lots of families traveling to Europe over the Carnaval break in late February, and other families coming back from Italy trips in the last few weeks.  We have one confirmed case of a parent of a 5th grader.  The 5th grade child, who is one of Lila’s classmates and friends, luckily tested negative. Still, at times it feels inevitable.  I was getting hugs from students whose parents had just come back from Italy, so who knows.  And you try telling a five year old that we don’t hug teachers any more, and don’t touch our faces.  I can’t even get them to not touch each other’s faces!  

And although the governor made the brave decision to cancel schools, the majority of the people in Brasilia are currently doing nothing different.  Restaurants are packed, people are hugging and kissing, and you would never know that a pandemic is sweeping across the world.  We were on a bike ride today and happened by a political rally with an endless stream of cars and people all gathering to show their support for the president of Brasil.  We checked that out from afar.  We are doing what we can, keeping our distance, keeping a low profile, and just waiting and wondering what will come next.

The two tall identical buildings way in the background are where people are actually gathering.  This is just a shot of the traffic to get there.

As a family, we have also had birthdays, and gotten driver’s licenses, and gone on mountain bike rides, and lots of other good old regular stuff, but we are definitely feeling the shadow of COVID-19 over everything we do right now.   We know that lots of others are in a much tougher place than we are right now, and our inconveniences feel minuscule by comparison.  Right now, we are thankful for every healthy day we have. Positive thoughts and energy to everyone, everywhere, from all of us.