Day 88: How I Learned to Love the Kitchen While Missing Normal Life

Day 88: June 22, 2020
Global Cases: 9, 180, 875 ; Deaths: 473, 484
Egypt Cases: 56, 809 ; Deaths: 2, 278

Perween Shinnawy 
Integrated Marketing Communication and Theater Junior 

I’m writing this after being confined to my house for three months, except for emergencies, because of the level of fear of this global pandemic.

But I remember how I used to be just a few months ago.

When I first heard about COVID-19, I was in the United States with my family on a business trip and I was on a two-week vacation from the Spring semester. I can’t call it a full-time vacation as I was doing all my assignments, projects, and everything else I was told to do while abroad.

I don’t usually skip university and travel with my parents; however, this time was for medical reasons. When I was coming back, some people in the airports were wearing masks while others, including me, were looking at them with amazement. My parents and I kept shopping, laughing, and having fun until the last minute without knowing that it would be the last time to travel in a while. 

The second day in Cairo, I was at university; back to my campus, friends, and professors wandering around from office to office catching up on everything I’ve missed. I was also getting ready and taking my position as an Assistant Stage Manager in the Performing Visual Arts department’s next production, “12 Angry Jurors”.

I started by preparing the script, sitting for night meetings, choosing the crew, auditioning for the cast, setting up everything, and finally starting the rehearsals. We rehearsed for around two months and we were about a week away from the opening night until that Thursday came. That was the last Thursday; it rained and everything shut down. 

We woke up the next days with a virus taking over the country, not allowing people to leave their houses. It became a normal tradition to wake up everyday and check the news of coronavirus cases increasing in either injuries or deaths. At first, we all believed that this wouldn’t last long and that we’d go back to live our normal life.

But here we are. We’ve been quarantined at home not only for one month, but for more than three months. God knows when this will end.

In the beginning of the quarantine, I’ll admit that my friends and I were too careless. We used to hang out until the curfew for some coffee or just car rides for the sake of having some fun. This was until this virus started to reach us, and one by one, we started to feel the virus coming closer to home.

For The Caravan‘s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page.

On the bright side, I decided to explore myself more during this boring quarantine and change it into a non-boring one. First of all, I have started tutoring children online and I found out that I have complete patience for this. I never thought that I can tolerate children or even have the patience to get along with them. Yet, I found that I’m actually capable of that.

Secondly, I have more time for my family. I used to wake up and go to university early morning.  I’d come back at night to say good night and go to bed to wake up early the next day and repeat the same routine. Now, I have more time than I ever had.

This quarantine is making up for every time I had wished to sit with my family to watch a movie, talk about something, argue on a specific topic, or even fight. Oh my God! It’s funny that university made me miss fighting with my family. I’m pretty sure that after this mess ends, the only thing I’m going to remember about it is the family time we spent together.

I also recently learned to love the kitchen. Most of the people who know me well, know that I have no tolerance for the kitchen. Yeah, we got that “Perry and the kitchen don’t mix” relation. But, I started getting along with the kitchen lately. I started it off with baking, which is the hardest stage of kitchen life, yet I cooked pizza, cake and the tastiest cookies from A to Z. Nobody believed it, but I did it!

On the academic side, I had different opinions from all my friends. All of them hated remote learning while I was doing totally fine with it. My only problem was with my studio classes. I hated taking a design class and two acting classes online. This was the only mess for me. And it wasn’t because it was hard, but for the fact that I wanted to be on campus learning those practical classes.  

So, I have been getting a great amount of sleep lately and this has been annoying my mother but pleasing me. But I’m satisfied. Despite being pleased with remote learning, I really miss being on campus roaming around, having coffee from L’aroma, meeting my friends and professors, and having normal classes too.

To be honest, I wasn’t excited to start my summer session too soon; nevertheless, multimedia writing turned it all around to be the best course I’m taking in summer. I get excited for every morning actually. I’m also taking a Sociology class which has  a huge workload, but I am interested in the subject. I am also taking a lab class, which is obligatory, but I am doing fine.

Last, but not least, I’m planning to take online courses after this summer session ends that is related to digital marketing, psychology and entrepreneurship. This is how my life has been going through COVID-19 and quarantine since 2020 has already started, and how I’m planning for the future as well (if nothing really shows up and changes my plans).