Long time no see... or read. Although many people from my generation seem to be dying of boredom, my last few months have been pretty busy.
Shortly after publishing my last post, where I was still talking about that we were waiting for news on how the school year will continue, our spring break dates got changed. Hence, we started one week earlier than usual. At that point, everyone was hoping that we could still go back on campus after the break, but that did not happen. Obviously, due to the increase in cases from day to day, that was not possible, so we switched to online classes. Luckily, our school and the students are very well equipped, so having all classes online was not a large difficulty. We stayed in the boarding house, every week, we got new regulations on how to interact with each other and how to treat the facilities, but we managed to make the best out of the situation. The situation in Singapore was changing too; we entered Circuit breaker phase 1, many schools were shut down, non-essential work placed were closed and going out was limited to only necessities. Hoping that these measures would help to normalise the situation we waited until the end of April, at this point our school would decide whether we would spend the rest of the school year online or go back to campus. In light of the still-rising cases, they made the well thought through decision to keep the college closed. At that point, I was already thinking about flying back home; many of my close friends had left, and the regulations on life in the boarding house were tightened every week.
I decided to leave on the first of May; my decision came very rapidly due to the fact that the number of flights reaching Europe decreased from week to week. I came home at the weekend, and very happy to see my family again, after almost nine months, I spend two weeks of quarantine at home. I got back in touch with my friends and met a few of them. It was great to be home again; nevertheless, school still had to go on. I woke up at 5:30 am most mornings to join at least two out of four blocks (lessons). All of my teachers were very understanding about my decision, and they helped me a lot with additional resources or out of school time meetings to catch up. From my friends back in Singapore I heard that the situation worsened, the people in the boarding house couldn't spend time with each other anymore and the day students were not able to leave their homes. I was very relieved and happy for them as the end of the circuit breaker was announced, right on the last day of school. They were glad to get outside and meet friends again, while I was at home enjoying my little birthday party with my close friends and family.
I spend most of the holiday visiting my grandparents and family before going on a fantastic road trip with my mum. Since we couldn't travel very far this year, we changed our plans to have a little tour through the south and east of Germany. My mum used this trip to convince me that Germany is not as I provincial as I always thought, and it worked. I got to see some beautiful cities; my favourite had to be Heidelberg. I fell utterly in love with the city. And since we had great weather most of the time, it was enjoyable to walk through many old towns and learn something about their history.
However, during the beginning of the trip, my mind was still very much concerned with Singapore. For most of the summer, Singapore did not allow anyone who is not Singaporean to enter the country, at the beginning of July they changed the regulation to enable PRs and long-term pass holders (aka people like me) back in. They had a small list of countries from where they accepted an application for re-entering, mostly Asian country but also Canada and Australia for a while. And then, while we were enjoying our trips, we got a message from my BSE in the boarding house that Germany was added to the list. That was one of the most relieving moments of the break, we applied for me re-entering, and after a few weeks, we got the acceptance to enter between the 3rd and 16th of August. Fastly, we booked the flight and got in touch with the school quarantine facilities.
I got home from our trip and started packing; I was very excited about the thought of going back. We managed all the little issues creeping up on the way, such as that I can only transit in Germany meaning I had to fly from Frankfurt with Singapore Airlines, and just a nine days ago I stood with my parents at the train station in Harburg.
Now I am sitting in the school-provided quarantine facilities. Although it gets a little boring from time to time I have a lot of time for catching up on schoolwork, talk to my family and my good friend Izzy here in Singapore. One week is already over, and I am looking forward to getting back to the boarding house on the 17th. Our school has already confirmed that we will be on campus at the beginning of the school year, so I am thrilled to see all my day student friends again. I am still sad that two of my best friends, Nandini and Francesco, are still stuck in their homes not being able to get back to Singapore, but we are all hopeful that they'll join us too.
Even though this summer has been an unusual one, I am very excited about the start of grade 12. It is our last year, in only nine months we will be graduating under hopefully better circumstances than the class of 2020.
Furthermore, I hope all of you are doing okay. It is great to catch up with you, so please leave some comments! I haven't figured out yet how I am able to respond to those, but I am working on it!!! You can be ensured that I will read them all. Stay happy and healthy; I'll upload once grade 12 has started, let's hope I don't get too busy :)