I am sitting beside the window and writing this blog. This is the window in my room and through where I could see the clouds, twilights, and even beautiful moonlight. Let alone someday, I could soak into the sunshine and enjoy my blueberry smoothie by sitting here. What a wonderful life, huh?
NO, NO, NO! It's not true, the reality is that I am bored with this! I have been sitting and doing anything I could do here for almost one month. Studying, working, taking a nap, reading, watching Netflix, FaceTime with friends, eating, dazing and etc. My life has been totally changed under the COVID-19 pandemic. Normally, I cannot stay at home for more than one hour except for sleeping time. While I must have to stay at home 24 hours now. So what did I do to entertain myself?
NO. 1 - Keep exercise even though there is only a 2-square-meters space. I am a real sports person, in other words, limited space cannot limit my enthusiasm for being active. Weight lifting by using water bottles, invisible rope skipping and Just Dance workout, I tried everything I could to make myself sweat.
Studies show that stretching could help relax major muscles in our body from our head to our feet. So start from now when you read here. Open a youtube video, whether it's Zumba or Yoga, follow it and have some stretching. Let's calm anxiety with movements.
No.2 - Cooking
No matter how good we are at cooking, there is no wonder that we all have to be our own chef now. Fortunately, I am quite a good chef. While my recent experience questioned my confidence in cooking.
Here is the recipe for a regular banana cake: 1 egg, 80ml milk, 20g sugar, 100g flour, 8g baking powder, 1 banana. There are only two keywords for direction, Mix and Bake.
After putting the pan into the oven, I was quite assured that I would have a perfect cake in 20 minutes. Exactly, My cake didn't let me down when I took it from the oven. However, when I had my first bite, I could not believe what happened, that was the saltiest cake I have ever eaten in my whole life! Yes, you are right, I made a big mistake that I added a lot of salt rather than sugar. First-time banana cake failed.
The next day, I cheered for myself to have another try. With all the ingredients prepared and I was more careful at each step. Because of the first time failure, I even tasted the sugar to make sure it was truly sweet sugar! However, I got another salty cake. I cannot figure out what's wrong. Does life want to play jokes on me?
We all say that cooking is healing. While cooking here makes me question myself. I have one banana left, should I try it again? Third time's a charm, let's see!
Above all are some activities I did during this overwhelming time. Stay at home is kind of exhausting with so many uncertainties around us, but we could still choose to stay happy. I hope that all of you are being well, we will get through this together! I encourage everyone to check out the mental health care package here offered by CAPS for additional resources.
Written by Tammy Wang
MSW Intern
International Center
