It’s been a minute since I blogged! I’ve been busy, tired, and burnt out, so I haven’t had much to say. Cats, teaching, worrying, planning for summer travel.

We had our big spring concert at my school last night. It was fun to see everybody all together! It was interesting to see how many people are absolutely okay being in a room, maskless, with hundreds of people…including other teachers. I wear a mask teaching, and have all year long. One of the schools that the kids go to is mask required due to the high number of cases, but those kids don’t have to wear masks other than at their own school, because…that makes sense.

Nonetheless, I have not been that worried about it lately. I have enough other things to worry about, and I just keep my mask on for work related things, because I decided awhile back if I was going to get COVID it would be NOT at work, but from doing something fun, and I’m sticking with that. I also wear masks at concerts and that sort of thing, because we are sitting there for 1-2 hours, side by side.

I digress a bit though. I didn’t plan to go on about COVID in this “post-COVID” world we are in, but it happens. I’ve been working hard collecting information about summer schedules for students, and tomorrow is the day I make the schedule, and I’m thrilled. I’ve been a little worried about it, but worst case not everybody will get a lesson every week they wanted it. I’ve taken on some extra summer students, and some of them have a lot of flexibility and it’ll work well, but others it turned out have less time and wanted two lessons a week during a 4 hour time period, and…we’ll see how that goes. I have decided not to blame people for trying, and I have learned a few more things about this year.

Okay, so I paused there for two days…in the meantime I got my summer schedule figured out and published to the online portal I use, woo hoo! Miraculously it mostly worked out and there were only a few days where I couldn’t fit everyone in, but mostly those students didn’t want a lesson every week anyway. I am coming up on the last regular week of teaching, then a 4 days “makeup week” for lessons missed during the semester (some were mine) and then, OFF TO NORWAY!

I’ve got a lovely trip planned for Norway. We fly into Oslo, spend one night there, then we take the train to Bergen. It’s supposed to be a really scenic train ride. We spend 3 nights in Bergen and then take a ferry to Balestrand as part of the “Sognefjord in a Nutshell” tour. We spend two nights in Balestrand, and will take an afternoon ferry trip to Fjaerland and the Glacier Museum, then finish our Nutshell tour with a ferry to Flam, a scenic train through the mountains to Myrdal, and then a train back to Oslo. We spend over a week in Oslo for Louie’s conference, and have a few activities planned there as well: a bike tour together (just regular bikes, not ebikes), and then I have two solo day trips planned while he is in the conference: a round trip ferry to Drobak and Oscarsburg, south of Oslo, and a bus trip that goes to Hadeland Glassworks and Kistefos Museum in Jevnaker. We are also planning to attend a few concerts in Bergen since we are there during the Bergen International Festival and we have tickets for Swan Lake at the Oslo Ballet. We may need a vacation from our vacation, (tripadvisor seems to think this is a bad thing, but I don’t, if it’s a sightseeing vation rather than a beach vacation) but I am so excited!

COVID gives us some worries of course, and we have to present a negative test to return home, which I think is ludicrous, but nonetheless still currently the policy. Why do I think it’s ludicrous? Because we aren’t required to follow any other COVID guidelines in the US,(such as masking on planes) and it seems completely outrageous that our own country could keep us from entering based on having a virus that…plenty of people here already have. So hopefully we won’t get COVID while we are there, because that would be a huge pain(especially as we are headed to another conference one week later) but I can’t worry about everything all the time! Norway has no entrance testing or requirements so that’s not a concern going there.

So that’s what I’ve been up to: teaching, finishing the semester, trip planning, scheduling, etc. Last weekend I finally got out in the backyard to do some weeding. I’m not sure my gardening plans this year: I keep thinking I’ll plant some things, but it’s looking less likely for this summer. We have enough travel going on that it will make it challenging to stay on top of things, though I still like the idea of fresh beans and maybe zucchini. I suppose I should decide and if so, plant in the next week!

How are you doing?