Like many people, we’ve had plenty of practice over the past few months with keeping ourselves entertained at home. The options in a hotel room are limited but somehow we manage to fill the days. I listen to my audio book, read stuff on my iPad, play Carcassonne online with my friend in Kansas, video chat with my friend in Seoul. This would be a whole different experience without technology.

I notice that established routines help – we find ourselves looking forward to any regular daily task like making tea and coffee in the morning, submitting meal requests for the next day, reporting our temperatures, and washing underwear. I do my daily NYT crossword, Andreas plays Words with Friends. I spend some time planning lessons for school, Andreas learns a few new words in Thai.

Here are some of the things we do:

As I mentioned in the previous post, our outdoor “relaxing time” was delayed by a few days but today we finally got our moment in the sun. We felt like the big kids, riding an elevator all by ourselves down to the 8th floor for our 30 scheduled minutes of outside time. Andreas used the bike, I walked around the grass square for 15 minutes and then did 15 more on the elliptical machine before the hall monitor sent us back to our room.

Only 23.5 hours to fill until our next relaxing time. Guess I could work on my blog.