Lockdown 2020 - Samantha Pegg

From midnight tonight, we will be in Level 4 lockdown. Stay at your house and work from home. Our future for the next while. I had no idea how everything would work and what would happen but we didn’t exactly have a choice. The first couple of days consisted of sleeping in a bit, going online for school and relaxing. Eventually, that became boring and repetitive. But Dad’s big birthday came around fast and we baked and decorated the most amazing chocolate cake shaped like an Illy coffee cup (Dad’s favourite coffee cup brand).

After doing walks around the neighbourhood, we found many walking tracks in Mount Vernon Forest Park. We completed many of these walks and did the Rapaki Track a few times as well. Sometimes you are so busy that you just don’t realise what lies outside your front door.

The country-wide initiative by a Facebook page called ‘We’re not scared” - Bear Hunt New Zealand was an amazing thing for kids in our neighbourhood to look forward to over lockdown. We made sure to change our bears every day so the kids could look out for them. My favourite one was the bears escaping out of an upstairs window using a bed sheet (I think it was the kids’ favourite too).

Finally, 0 community cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand. Isolation was over and we slowly got back to a normal routine of going to school in person and seeing friends. Even though things weren’t normal, I have never been more grateful to be at school. Lockdown wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but I am certainly pleased we got it over and done with.