The QuaranTEENS

After several weeks without a long walk, I had to stimulate my legs. That’s why my father and I decided to go for a walk on the banks of the Seine not far from my house. We didn’t meet many people except people fishing or small groups of children playing with each other. At the beginning, after walking for 30 minutes, I had small pains in my joints, but they quickly went away. This walk did me a lot of good, both physically and morally, by clearing my mind. In the end, we walked for more than 3 hours.

Then, in the days that followed I accompanied my mother by walking 1 hour for the outward journey and 1 hour for the return journey to be able to go to the station because my mother had to get these tickets refunded. In the end, they told her to do a walk on the Internet, a walk that wasn’t much used for the main purpose, but it wasn’t a refusal to go out for a bit. However, I noticed the difference in the abundance of people, there was a lot more in places that are already busy bases, but I was not shocked, I expected it, it’s normal it’s necessary to resume little by little the “normal” life. The only thing that surprised me was the people who do not respect the fact that some parks are closed, they have appropriated lawns that are intended as a base for works of art in memory of dead people.

Since the post-quarantine, I have often gone for strolls. It gave me real pleasures to get some fresh air and to discover again the city of Paris. In the first days of post-quarantine, I thought there would be a lot of people outside but finally not so much. People were rather in car than on the streets. Then I went to the docks and I began to see a lot of people walking around or running. I was surprised to see that police was still present in the entire city. However exit certificate was no more need and police controls have consequently stopped. On the first week-end of the post-quarantine, I went to Fontainebleau. There were a lot of people to walk in the forest.

Since the beginning of the post-quarantine, I have found that each person stayed at home but during this first week-end my opinion changed a little bit. Nevertheless I find that the post-quarantine is globally well respected. Most of people wear masks outside and teenagers as well. I think mask is a good thing for confined spaces. It is also a reassuring measure for old or weak persons.

Last Thursday, I read an article in Le Figaro’ newspaper and Michel Blanquer was saying that he wanted that each student go back at school at least once before the end of May. In this article, we could also find the point of view of doctors and they were not in favor of reopening schools because children are, in short, healthy carriers and can very easily contaminate teachers and other employees. Will we go back to school before summer holidays? The answer should come in a few weeks . . .

I didn’t think the end of confinement would happen like this.
In fact, when I went outside I saw that people were going out a lot .
The end of containment does not mean the end of the virus and I find that people are not aware of this enough.
Even if people are wearing masks, there are many situations where we are very close and there is a possibility of contamination.

I went out a few times to celebrate the end of the containment with my girl friends who had missed me. We go outside and we talk using a mask for sure ! As we are in a risk zone, the parks are closed, so we decided to settle on a square: place of victories. One of my favorite places.

I don’t get out that much, but I enjoy going out when I feel like it.

Since the confinement is over, we can see outside a lot of people. People without mask or any other protection. The end of lockdown caused a feeling of liberty but we can’t think like this. Indeed, the virus is here, the virus is everywhere around us.  

I understand that staying at home is complicated especially now with the good weather. However, we need to measure the consequences of our actions, we need to understand that go out every day can harm us, harm others, the most fragile. We can’t be selfish!  

While waiting for a vaccine, we have to be strong and stay optimist.  

See you next week!  

EIGHTH WEEK

This week ended with good news : the end of quarentine. We won’t be able to have the same life as before but we can slowly regain our freedom in hopes to achieve a new normal. Starting with, no more travel certificates. 

If people respect the barrier gestures, we should be able to reopen restaurants within a month. It would be a step in fixing the country’s economy. In the meantime I enjoy making various different salads which I find enjoyable.

I made masks with my father’s partner for my family.  Now I know how to use the sewing machine.

Monday, I went to see my best friend who was coming back from the countryside.  It did me a lot of good to see her again while respecting the distances.

Finally my boyfriend came home and we ordered sushi it was great.  I missed him a lot ! 

After several weeks of quarantine, it’s officially the end of lockdown. I was waiting for this for a long time. They’re still restrictions but we can finally go out without an authorization within 100km. Hopefully there will not be another phase of containment anytime soon. Right now, there is a big problem with masks. A lot of town halls has received and distributed “masks” which was not of good quality. But, at least, there giving those away for free. Some schools are opening for young people, but it’s not the same as before, they are very careful and they take a lot of security measures. We are slowly regaining our lives like they were before this whole quarantine thing started.

Finally the lockdown is over but that doesn’t mean the virus also, so we still need to be careful in order to protect ourselves but also those around us and that includes wearing a mask, washing our hands frequently and respect social distancing.

I’ve always been a home lover so I wasn’t bordered about staying home. I occupied myself by watching movies and series, reading, listening to and doing music, doing tiktok’s 🤣, my homework and I spent a lot of time on Twitter. Twitter is a great platform to express and also inform yourselves (when you follow appropriate media’s), I let lots of things there. People made me laugh, but I was also chocked by others carelessness and stupidity. During the lockdown they were lots of debate to which I contributed. I watched a documentary on Netflix, called living undocumented, they filmed real undocumented families, their stories were very sad, some were deported, I recommend it to you guys because it shows the reality and we get to know how they feel, because they are confronted to injustice, discrimination and racism.
I think the most difficult thing during the confinement is to feel people around you meanwhile you want to be on our own, on some days I was like :

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I need to tell all of you next week Wednesday is my birthday and I will turn 18. So I started warming up to be pretty on that day and this is the result :

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Stay safe homies 💕

After having been locked up for almost 2 months, we are finally allowed to go out.

It’s such a wonderful relief, an unindescribable feeling. Of course I went out on monday, and being able to walk down on the street freely is amazing. Being able to feel the presence of passers-by and see new faces was a special feeling that I haven’t been able to experience for a long time. However, In my case, I still have a weird feeling about what’s going on. The atmosphere is still heavy, half of the people are wearing masks and the shops are mostly closed. But let’s take a look at the bright side, we can hang out with our friends, spend time outside, we won’t have to stay home and wonder “What am I gonna do to pass the time ?”, because we already know what to do.

In my opinion, we will have to wait a long time before returning to our former everyday life. School is still over for us, and we are still going to spend a lot of time on Netflix and Fortnite.

I’ve become so used to confinement these past two months and now that the city has “reopened,” not much has changed for me. I didn’t rush out and see friends, I’m not eager to go shopping and I don’t miss the mall. I miss Five Guys and going out to eat and well, I guess I am finally sick of my own cooking.

I haven’t been posting a lot because honestly, after keeping after so many emails, I haven’t had the strength to write. This is also a student project but whatevs!

How did I spend my time in my “quar”?

I took out the sewing machine and made masks.

I lurked on my neighbor since that’s the only entertainment here. Why is she on the roof with a stranger during quarantine? We may never solve the mystery.

I camped out in my living room for a few days. I even put on “nature” sounds and put woodsy essential oils in my diffuser for the full sensory effect.

I cooked a lot of delicious food and FaceTimed my friends and family daily. Honestly, this doesn’t replace human contact but since I’ve been living abroad for over eight years, I’m used to seeing my family once a year.

Now that everything is open and Parisians are back to acting heedless or even reckless, I’m not changing my habits. I don’t go out very much and plan to keep it that way. To be honest, like many of you, I’m waiting for everything to get shut down once again since people are not following the rules and guidelines very strictly. How are you celebrating your “freedom”?

On this third week of Ramadan I was still trying to find something useful to do given that I was tired of Fortnite, Warzone and Naruto. At first I got very excited about cooking with my mums, it’s a very instructive way of spending your time I think. But actually, I needed to find another way of spending my time while eating my muffins, my carrot cake and my fondant au white chocolat. By looking at Netflix’s top 10 I found “Top Boy”, a show about drug traffic and gang wars in UK and more specifically in London suburbs. By watching that show I realized how lucky I was and how hard is street life, you can get knifed or get thrown acid on you just because you were trying to provide for your family and criminality is the only thing society has left for you. After finishing the first season I was disappointed to not find a second one, I then spent my free time listening to music coming out from that “world”, the biggest mouvement being « drill ». I recommend you the songs “let’s lurk” by 67 and “Heartache” by jaykae.

Ismael CK