CONFINEMENT WRITINGS

#1 My life in quarantine

Ha ! Confinement ! What to say about it ?

For my part, it didn’t start very well. I fell ill after 2 days of confinement ! But don’t worry, it wasn’t the coronavirus, just a big nasopharyngitis with a really big throat pain. But now, after more than 2 weeks, I feel better.

During this confinement, I have never done so much sport in such a short time ! I practice every day even when I was sick. Come to think of it, I really have to be bored to do so much sport! But well, that’s not that bad.

One of the advantages of the confinement is that you don’t have to make yourself pretty, you can stay in pyjamas all day, nobody is here to judge you except my mom but she loves my pyjamas!

During the confinement, it’s a little bit difficult to be completely organised because you can’t have the same rhythm of work as at school but I adapt.

The biggest problem is that you have to stay far from all distraction like Netflix which is very hard, but we are strong, we need to resist.

The goal of confinement is to stay at home, I think I really respect the rules! I have never been out of my house since the beginning, only once to go to my mailbox which is 3 metres away from my house. What a journey!

The worst part is that it started to be sunny when we were confined. Coincidence, I don’t think so ! As this is the period of Easter soon, with my family, we decided to celebrate Easter every day. My mother hides a mini egg in the house every day and we have to find it . A real battle is taking place between me and my brother.

It’s only been 3 weeks since we’ve been confined but I’m already going crazy! I speak with some things because of the lack of human contact. I hope I am not the only one. I cannot wait to come back to school to have classes in real life and to see my friends again.

Charlène

Avril 2020

#2 My confined life

Day 1:            Yesterday evening, the President announced the beginning of the confinement. This morning, I decided to take advantage of my confined day by sleeping and finishing the series that I had started before the containment.  

Day 2:           It's calm. I sleep, I eat, I sleep ... Again and again. I have time to do everything I have to do. Washing the car, tinkering, hurting myself while tinkering but not too much because there are no more hospitals... I'm starting to appreciate this moment. I try not to read the news so as not to feel depressed.

Day 3:           As every day. Nothing changes. I watch movies and sleep. I didn't even care that it was Monday. No more jeans and clothes, now it's jogging trousers and a sweatshirt.

Day 4:            To change my routine, I decided to stop watching movies to devote myself to series.

Day 5:            I miss my friends; I miss high school but not lessons.

Day 6:            I feel like I have been at home for 20 years. I'm almost done with Netflix. I'm aiming for the world record in series watching.

Day 7:            This is it! I completed my Netflix challenge… this morning. World record broken! No I’m laughing, I’ve only finished 5 series. According to my friends, homework should start tomorrow. I also decided to get into sport. I was running in the vineyards with my dog. It is 8 years old but runs better than me.

Day 8:            Today is a great day, I did something of my day for the first time. I worked for school.

Day 9:            Everything seems long to me, math exercises, history lessons, geography lessons... Unable to leave my house to go running, so I walked 8km around my house. I swear that it is very long with head spinning. And then I slept. To sum up,  to me, confinement means sleeping and working for school.

… And watching Netflix, and getting bored !

Anonymous

#3 Confinement

    When the government announced the containment, I didn’t really expect in which way it could change my daily life, excepted for school, because I am not someone who spends a lot of time outside with friends or things like that. But reality is very different, it is a strange feeling to stay like this at home especially for a period of unknown duration, and each day begins to look pretty the same.

It is mainly for these reasons that I try to organise my time and keep attending school even if I don't go to school but with a little difference, now I make sure that I don't wake up to early and enjoy my bed a little more than usual, and that is a very good point!

Home schooling is a bit difficult even if the teachers are very involved. In fact, it takes time, it is complicated to get organised and, in some subjects, it is hard to understand without specific explanations. In short, pedagogical continuity occupies a large part of my days and because of that, I didn't think I would say so one day, but I would rather be at school.

Otherwise, I thought that the lockdown would allow me to do what I don't usually take the time to do at home, like reading the books I was given or watching some movies or series I hadn’t seen yet, but not at all. I spend a lot of time playing video games with my friends or just talking with them, but it has a good side because it permits me to keep social contacts during this special period that requests social distancing.

Apart from that, I try to take advantage of this confinement by spending time with my parents both in the house or outside to try and continue doing sports. But it is also difficult, my mother works in the medical community and my father spends its entire day in front of its laptop on teleworking.

Finally, I hope that the duration of this crisis we are experiencing will be the shortest possible because I am already impatient to get my normal life back!

April 2020,

Nicolas

#4 Confinement

We've been obsessed with lockdown for three weeks. In my opinion, this new event is very awkward and previously unseen for all of us. We must change our habits, get organized in a huge family to take lessons and not to be late. Enjoying myself is also a difficult task because a routine has taken hold. Moreover, I must make very difficult decisions: Should I sleep or eat? Should I watch a series or a film? Should I take a break or a nap? But there are lots of advantages: we have more "free" time at home therefore we can play video games and watch Netflix. Furthermore, no cars, no fumes, no industry: it's a good thing for climate and earth. It's the apocalypse and no one is supposed to be outside. We must spend more time with our family and the first tensions appear after three weeks, even the TV programme of the night becomes a problem. More seriously, there are lots of disadvantages: we aren't able to see our friends, to practise team sports, to walk in the forest, to enjoy the weekend outside, in a different place... Besides, we have to take lessons in a different way, by ourselves, because my sister who is 13 seems to be more competent to help me for maths and physics than my parents. Finally, we're all waiting for the announcement of the end of the confinement by the government. But, above all, we have to be united and respect the restrictions to help the heroic health care staff who risk their lives every day to fight the virus. 

I hope your confinement is better than mine ;)

Florian Tribut

April 2020

#5  Confinement   

Since the announcement by the president, we have been confined at home. It changes many things in my daily life. In fact, social life is stopped and if we want to restart our life one day, we need to respect all governmental rules.

   It’s the first time that we have been in complete autarky isolated from the rest of the world except with media and social network. It is a strange feeling to feel alone. I don't know how long it will last and the consequences of this confinement, but one thing is sure, it will surely mark us all.

   Indeed, at first glance, this seems to create only drawbacks. Being a sporty person, it is impossible to continue my training due to lack of space. In addition, preparing for an archery competition without a bow is very difficult. The only competition I could prepare to integrate a school was cancelled. Everything I had prepared for over a year fell apart in a few days. To this regret is added stress, stress to go out and meet an infected person, stress about my studies and stress to lose someone. We can no longer go out with our friends but have to reduce all social life to our family circle. Even if we still call each other, this does not replace physical contact.

   But there are also some positive points. In fact, it permits to enforce relationship with members of my family and stick together. Moreover, as I like to play video games, I am used to staying confined in my room and it doesn't really change my daily life and my mother sees that it is not impossible for me to do so. Finally, this confinement really allows me to develop my autonomy and makes me more mature. What I feel today is a feeling of anxiety mixed with a feeling of uncertainty and helplessness in the face of events that we do not control.

   Hoping that the situation improves and that we can resume a normal life I wish you all well.

                      Goodbye (from my room)

Victor

April 2020

#6 Confinement

On Thursday, 12th March, 2020, when the French president announced the closure of the schools from next Monday on, I was at the boarding school. We had connected the phone to the speaker and the president’s voice echoed throughout the dorm. His own voice answered him from the adjoining rooms with a time in advance or behind. A friend collapsed in tears when she learned that she was going to be trapped with her parents for an indefinite period. Another stood up to comfort others for whom confinement was going to be particularly difficult, and I took, brutally, the full measure of what it would mean for others.

In contrast, since I have been at home, everything seems to float in surreal calm, down to the weather. I work all day from 8 a.m. to midnight, first on high school courses and then on the preparatory medicine courses, which I follow in parallel. On that side, no changes compared to high school, except that I sleep a little more. Some subjects are more suitable than others for distance education: in math, it's even easier than in class, even if I work more and longer than before. Usually, at each vacation, I have a course in medical prep for a week and I spend the second week to revise for the practice tests. I feel like I've been stuck in the middle of this second week of vacation for almost a month. I had planned a lot of things to do, however, for example, finish “The Portrait of Dorian Gray”, read “To the Lighthouse”; I did not read a single page. But I wrote a little bit. The synopsis of my last book is almost finished. I work pretty well like that and it's easier for me to organize myself. I live in the countryside with a garden and the confinement is like any vacation. It would not change anything for me if it was extended until the summer holidays but I hope that it will not be the case. Just because things are easy for me does not mean that it is the case for everyone and many people around me suffer from confinement.

 Anonymous