Friday June 19, 2020 is a big day for us! The start of Phase 2!

A few days ago we got the fantastic news that COVID-19 community cases are so low that we're entering Phase 2 on Friday. Almost everything will reopen: shops, restaurants, bowling alleys, gyms, parks, beaches, pools, playgrounds....

Some of the larger venues like museums won't be open right away. I'm assuming Universal Studios and the zoos probably fall in that category. But we are very excited about the pools and playgrounds.

The girls already have their first play date arranged for Saturday and their Drama class resumes in person next week. That will have been 88 days since the last time they played with a child outside their family.

We're allowed to be out in public in groups of 5 (max.) and we're allowed to receive visitors in our house of up to 5 people...so we could have 11 people in total in our house or we can go out as a family (as we are 5) so as long as we don't bring our Helper or meet up with anyone else. It also means that on weekdays I can go on outings with the kids with our Helper too. MsC keeps trying to do the math as to how she can play with her friends. The scenario she's favoring is that I act as the only parent outside, with her, MsE, and her two best friends. I haven't told her yet we could have 5 friends come into our house. Interestingly 5 kids is the most we ever had over at one time before COVID-19 also.

I considered briefly whether I'm okay with us meeting up with people and going out in public so freely. I think I'm okay with it. I trust that Singapore has an accurate sense of how many cases are actually in Singapore. They are asking us to maintain social distancing where possible and wear masks in public, but Singapore hasn't asked us to keep our bubbles small like other countries have.

Frankly, I don't think we could unless we continue to not play with other kids.

In Singapore, we generally only hang out regularly with people from about 4 other families, but those people all have interactions with a wide range of people, because at a minimum most of them are in school; not to mention all the kids we're going to encounter on the playground, in the pool, and in Drama class.

So we'll go out, meet our friends, and just try to keep the masks on and the hands washed.