March 9th-14th

March 9^th-14^th

By Monday the 9^th, these early local warnings were seeping into “cancellations”.  First, a field trip for our 10 year old daughter on Wednesday the 11^th was postponed to June.  The trip included meeting students of another Montessori school in Valencia- which was seeing many more cases of coronavirus.  Next a “family in nature” day planting trees at our son’s high school,  scheduled for the 14^th is cancelled.  The trip was to a rural area, other than the bus, mostly outdoors, we weren’t quite sure it made sense to cancel, and we only understood later the risk factor of the bus ride.  Nonetheless, I had a medium size work meeting (30-50 people) on Wednesday from different work sites, this was not postponed.  I was going to get my bread and coffee, but much more attentive to whether the snack I ate had been on display long, where I put my lips on the coffee mug…etc.  the corona nerves were beginning to enter.

By Thursday we here the first big news: the regional government had closed all centers of education as of the coming Monday, the 16^th.  Stores on Thursday afternoon were already much emptier than usual, but the city was still abuzz…

The announcements of the closures was still not altogether clear:  would it affect universities and pre-school children’s’ daycare as well?  Was it for both public and private institutions?  One of the school’s two of our children attend did not receive any official direct announcement, either that day or Friday and had to prepare to close without being sure it was happening, other than a press release and TV announcement.

That Friday, students at our son’s high school were saying bye-bye to each other with a “feliz corona-puente” (happy corona break)!  And at our younger children’s’ school something like half the families di not attend.  We had begun to stock up on groceries and food, though realized in some places that certain stores were more crowded than ever! And thus better to avoid…

While the supermarket was stocked, there were certain empty aisles and gondolas—most of the white pasta, and all paper goods (toilet paper towels and napkins were all gone…funny that the while wheat past was doing fine.  All the lactose free milk had been cleared out, and local brand of milk were out, though other milks were well stocked…funny how the frenzied buying habits work at first…

We went to the local library to stock up on books for the family, but noticed that they were closed as of midday too, until further notice…blast!

As Saturday rolled around, we had a family meeting and talked about what we were going to do, we had thought initially we would have lots of outside time (going to parks for example) I called a nearby nature reserve, and they told us the visitors center was closed and the short trolley to get to the reserve (especially for people without cars like us) was also closed…the reserve was open if you could get to it!....This was where we were beginning to notice that it was not only going to be a lot of time but also confinement at home.

That afternoon we heard the official announcement via our phones, there was a decree of a national “state of alarm” (estado de alarma), and thus all non-essential services that had public service had to be closed.  Pharmacies, groceries and cleaning products stores could remain open.  Other business could only work without serving the public. No restaurants, no bars, etc.