Our family gets sick after neighbor contracts Covid

 Both of our children were sick this past week with low-grade fevers, crankiness and clinginess. They had runny noses and some sneezing, and a little bit of coughing. My son could have been fighting teething issues, but I think something else was going on, especially since he has a cough. My daughter seemed to have the worst of it, staying up most of  the night on Sunday, acting a little delirious and taking extremely rare afternoon naps on Monday and Tuesday. Everybody was getting closer to being 100 percent as the week went on. I mention this because the guy across the street was diagnosed with Covid this week and he was showing our daughter his caged hamster last Saturday. He wasn't wearing a mask; he's one of several people I see on our street roaming around outside without a mask. New cases are topping 100,000 a day in Vietnam, although they're reportedly low in our province. I don't want to sound too cynical, but there's probably more since not everyone is testing all the time. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added Vietnam to the Level 4 "high risk" travel destination category this week due to Covid.  My wife and I now feel ill, with runny noses, sore throats and other unmentionable issues. We'll be fine. Most of the schools in our area have returned to online learning after a short stint of in-person classes. Some of the students were diagnosed with Covid. My daughter had a tiny bit of homeschooling this week, but I let her cruise. She's more than earned it with some excellent work of late. Being sick when it's 96 degrees with a real feel of 104 due to humidity can be confusing -- is it fever or just the nasty heat? Thermometers and chills determine real-deal sickness. No chills yet and, as noted, fevers were low grade. Ironically, after watching cases soar in the U.S. when cases here were relatively low, the situation has been reversed now.
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I play classical musical as background for homeschooling for Joanna, and it stays on much of the day until my daughter hijacks the laptop to watch an ever-changing variety of videos, from kids songs, to Octonauts, to David Attenborough. It's so cute because she'll be coloring and humming Beethoven, or Vivaldi, or Mozart. My son, who's going to be 22 months old soon, likes Vivaldi, mainly because of the cartoon of birds, leaves, snow, and rain that accompanies Vivaldi's "four seasons." It's must-watch video before bedtime for Elijah, meaning he'll fuss unless it's played. It almost always gets played.
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It's getting more difficult to watch coverage and read about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The bombing of residential areas and subsequent civilian casualties are becoming more prevalent. U.S. President Joe Biden warned that some grim days were coming for Ukrainians in his State of the Union address. True enough. And bombing that resulted in a fire at a Ukrainian nuclear plant shows just how ruthless and reckless this attack has been.
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There are fewer crazy speeders on our street, but still enough to cause concern and lead me to signal the drivers to slow down. ... We're probably looking at waiting at least another five months before we get a decision on my wife's visa request ... Alexander Hamilton bio-book is interesting and entertaining, and part of it takes place near where I grew up and even includes events involving the Brandywine River, where I did a little swimming as a teen.