I saw a tweet today that said “When are we going to have something ‘unprecendented’ yet this year?” and it is totally sums up how I feel. Nothing in 2020 feels like anything we could have ever expected and even in February of this year if I told myself that this is what we’d be living through now I wouldn’t believe it at all. But I’m currently in my 15th day of a 14 day quarantine in isolation with my two 12-year olds and our 5 month old yorkie poo puppy in Coquitlam, BC Canada and thankfully we are almost ready to rejoin civilization again. If you are Canadian like me, and have been wanting to head ‘home’ to see family and friends after living away or maybe you are traveling to someplace that requires a quarantine, these are some of things that really helped us get through our time.
Planning ahead and knowing the rules about quarantine where you are or where you are going
Without a cure or vaccination for coronavirus and with schools starting in so many places, I can only imagine that more and more people will have to do a 14 day quarantine in isolation at some point. The Canadian border is now closed and has been since March and Vancouver is only 2 and a half hours away from our home in Seattle. In days before covid we would commute often between the two cities and have always thought ourselves lucky to be able to live so close to family. Since it closed, we have been watching border updates to see when it opened no avail-after realizing it would likely not open this year my husband and I decided that the kids and I would make the trip north this summer so that our hearts don’t break. I still can’t believe that in all the years of my parents and my grandparents living in North America, no one has stories like this of the borders ever being closed.
For Canadians returning home after travels there is a website that guides you through the things you need to do and how you need to do it. From Seattle I downloaded the app and filled it out within 48 hours of our crossing at the Pacific Truck Crossing and it made our trip from Seattle to Vancouver a whole lot easier because we filled it out. I had my husband complete the form consent letter off the Canada government site for each of the kids too because he was not with us on this trip. From the site I learned that during the 14 day quarantine for travelers you are not allowed to have contact with anyone who is not quarantining with you. You need your own contained space. You need to get your groceries and food delivered. And you can’t leave quarantine until the 14 days are up. In my case, I was phoned twice by the government and was told that my quarantine actually lasted one day longer than I was expecting. I thought the first day counted as day 1 but apparently it does not. So the 14 day quarantine might actually be 15 days and that is probably something you want to note if you start making plans for after your quarantine is finished.
(The only thing I wish was that the border agent was wearing a mask when we arrived in the country. We wore ours in the car, but we noticed that none of the border agents were wearing them and the people in the car in front of us were not wearing masks either. Our interaction with the border agent was the only time before the 14 day quarantine that I was in contact with someone not wearing a mask and it made me feel a bit helpless and if border agents are in contact with ALL people coming into Canada, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to wear a mask.)
A Desk Cycle and a Skipping Rope
I was gifted a Desk Cycle a year or two ago and I use it when I type in my office. I packed it with us for this trip and today I crossed the 400 minute mark and it’s been a good way to get some exercise. I also bought a skipping rope online and I jump on my patio every time I feel like I’ve been sitting on my couch too long. I didn’t do a ton of exercise in quarantine-my motivation has been really low, but it was a good way to get my muscles a bit tired and I did do at least 30 minutes every day.
Books
I brought 14 books for 14 days of quarantine. So far I’ve read one.
Outschool
With two boys who need a bit of structure in these days that flow from one into the next, I was glad to learn that Outschool works in Canada too. The kids usually take Spanish during the school year and it was easy to sign them up for a Spanish class through Outschool on a day after they played way too many video games and watched all the Clone Wars on Disney Plus.
Disney Plus
Disney Plus has been one of our best parts of this 14 day quarantine and for the 150ish days since March when our regular lives ceased to exist. We have watched all the Star Wars that we can and recently finished both the Clone Wars and Rebels series as well. We are now excited to start the Mandalorian. I love that so many of the messages in Star Wars can be applied to our life in 2020. If you want to talk about current events or history or even encourage creative writing with 12 year old boys who sometimes only mutter one word answers, we definitely are able to do a lot of these things after watching an episode of Clone Wars together.
Grass Delivery for dogs
At home in Seattle we don’t have a lot of grass in our yard so we order something called Fresh Patch that is a real grass patch for dogs and it makes it easy for travel if we bring it along. Scout is a yorkie poo and he is only about 3.5 pounds right now and probably won’t be more than 5 pounds so this type of grass is perfect for him. I couldn’t find Fresh Patch in Canada, but found something called Pet Pasture and made sure we had it for when we arrived in quarantine. I like Fresh Patch a bit better-it seems to be a bit more solid and I don’t think it has dirt in it even though it is real grass. But having the Pet Pasture grass has made being in quarantine a lot easier and we have already reordered. (Both of these products seem to last around 2 weeks)
Apps that are so helpful for food delivery and even bubble tea too
We use Door Dash and Uber Eats for food delivery in Seattle and they work in Coquitlam and Vancouver too. I love that the Vancouver area has plentiful bubble tea so ordering bubble tea through a food delivery service has been one of my greatest joys of this 14 day quarantine. Both of these delivery apps have contactless delivery so they just leave my orders on the doorstep. My favorite bubble tea came from a place called Xing Fu Tang because it had an adorable bunny jelly on top. I love innovative food-is this something you enjoy looking for too?
Outdoor Access
In the mandatory quarantine you are not allowed to have visitors or leave where you are staying but you are allowed to use your yard and outdoor areas by yourself. Having access to something like a backyard was so helpful to our mental wellness. I’ve heard in places like Australia where people are also required to quarantine some people have had to stay in a one room hotel room without even being able to open windows for a week. I don’t think I could do a 14 day quarantine like that sanely with two kids and a dog. Even on days they did not want to go outside, I made the kids and dog go outside at least a couple times a day for fresh air so that everyone would get good sleep. Within a few minutes of getting outdoors we always felt better. (I guess if we couldn’t go outside we would watch a lot of some kind of nature channel and order a fan on Amazon to simulate a breeze.)
Legends Haul or Spud.ca or any other type of grocery delivery
My sister told me about Legends Haul ages ago and it is something I wish we had in Seattle. It’s in the Vancouver area and it is a grocery delivery service that also has some pre-made foods from Vancouver restaurants that I love. They have things like Medina Cafe waffles, and frozen croissants from Cadeaux bakery (the bakery where I got my yummy cake for my epic milestone birthday!). I also ended up buying a really cool disposable portable and biodegradable grill called a Casus Grill from Legends Haul. They have real groceries but you know what real groceries are-these were the fun things that I really wanted to order.
Spud also has cool things that are made in Vancouver that you can have delivered to your house. I ordered my husband some Granola King granola to bring home and I ordered local cherries to eat with breakfast. I also ordered Earnest ice cream so I could get dry ice to play with in the pool I bought online.
And Family and Friends
What would life be without family and friends? They’re the very reason we are here in the first place and we can’t wait to see them. Although isolation is so lonely and we can’t have visitors, people have put things on our doorstep and delivered food. We couldn’t see them or interact with them but all these things made us think of our loved ones and reminded us of what we were doing in quarantine and we were very thankful for their support.
My parents are also the biggest reason I was able to quarantine with my kids and dog. They own the basement suite I stayed in so I didn’t need to find an Airbnb. They picked up groceries and dropped homemade food on my doorstep and got everything ready for us to arrive. I couldn’t be more grateful for how my parents helped me do this really hard thing and it made me feel not alone in this loneliness knowing that they were close.
After quarantining here in isolation for all these days I realize how important a 14 day quarantine is for helping keep the coronavirus numbers low in Canada. No one can bring the virus into the country if they have to isolate. When I think about how drastically different our daily lives are right now in Seattle and Vancouver it is hard to believe they are only a 2.5 hour drive apart. But in one place all travelers quarantine so locals don’t need to wear masks, can frequent restaurants and museums and virus numbers are fairly low. In the other people can travel anywhere without quarantining and despite a mandatory mask order in so many public places, virus numbers are still very high.
I’m almost finished this isolation. We have maybe just a few hours left. And it was tough and it meant putting a lot of things on hold and giving up a lot of time, but my kids and I needed to see family. We wanted to come home. And it is unbelievable that it takes a 14 day, now 15 day trip to accomplish what we used to take for granted in a quick 2.5 hour drive.
So this is yet another unprecedented thing we’ve experienced this year: this is ‘travel’ in 2020 and hopefully, one day soon, we’ll go back to a bit more normal again.
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
Glad to hear you made it through! It will be worth it to get to see everyone! Hugs to you all ❤️