Colour coded

Hello and sorry for the prolonged disappearance of blogs. Seems l’m locked out of this blog via usual website login since l updated my phone (codes not being received by new SIM details etc) . Lockdown returned immediately after Chine New year and we’ve all been in a way conscripted into the fight against Covid. Every other day we are required to queue up for a nucleic acid test and we all have digitalized colour codes on our phones. Green means Covid free and not been near (800 m away) confirmed Covid cases and yellow means been near Covid and red means you have Covid and instant isolation and quarantine for 2 week. We are sort of governed by our colour codes. And so we mainly don’t take the children anywhere as there’s a risk of 2 week separation ( we know of another Brit family where this happened). One blessing is that in our compound we have community and the kids have great friends and are at an age where they don’t want to go anywhere anyway if there’s our pet puppy or friends to play with, nintendo or football options. “What were your highlights of China living; Gideon?“ “fifa and sonic the hedgehog mainly.”

lt seems we are waiting for a 14 day Covid free time before schools and things can open again, which may mean we are waiting for quite some time. With the closing down of everything, we have had to create our own small amusements within our compound, so - pancake parties, bake offs and picnics have ensued.

Two days ago, Suzhou Family company organised a 24 hour mini break in xishan ( nearby village and islands by Taihu) , which was amazing considering everything is closed. Our bus made a smooth 1.5 hour journey to the destination, having waited a few minutes at the police check point for health code checking where they waved us on without checking. We set off for the destination to be told as we arrived at our accomodation that the police had changed their minds and wanted us to go all the way back for individual code checks. Apart from that, we really enjoyed tea picking and roasting, green tea soap making and short hikes.

Our writers group is continuing to be full of good intent for our climate change anthology and l had a poem published in another anthology last month which can be found at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09S65TJLC/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwrobinb-21&

We’re all quite excited if God willing, we can return to England in the not too distant future, although l will be travelling back earlier with Gideon and Emily and hopefully Mike will follow on. There have been accounts of the Lord’s faithful protection and way making for a Ukranian sister’s family in our Suzhou believers community and we ask of Him the same over ours.