13.5

Swine flu.

It's been amazing to see how things have played out. Overall here, there is an incredible fear of the H1N1 virus. While many people know it's an incredibly weak virus, it's apparent that the country in general has established a pattern for over-reacting to any rumor of flu.

I keep hearing of a student (from another school) who died of swine flu. As I understand it, he went to a hospital, was diagnosed but mistreated. The treatment complicated his flu and other pre-existing condition and the results were traumatic. I don't think it's a simple matter of symantics - I'd say he died of poor medical treatment. But here, the word on the street is the cause of death was swine flu.

So, this brings me to today. We have two confirmed cases in school. The first was 48 hours ago, and yesterday we were missing around 30% of our student body. Everyone heard that one student had swine flu and many chose to stay home for precautionary reasons.

Yesterday, at midnight, we had a second confirmed case - the first students older brother. By the time I woke up, I had a text message informing me that students would not be in school for three days.

At this point, and the way things have been going, I'm going to predict that I won't see a student in my room until late January.

Who knew when I signed a TWO YEAR contract, that because of irrational delays and confused logic I'd be teaching one year of curriculum delivered over a two year span. (It hasn't come to that yet...)

6:24 a.m. It's a staff only day at school. I'm going to make one last prediction: Today will be the "Day of stupid questions."

One funny part of this is at this point, I'm actually having a blast living through this. It reminds me of grade school when other students (Joe D.) would start to cause disruptions. Pretty soon chaos ensued in the classroom, and one could just sit back and enjoy. :P

I will have stories to tell!