Naama Simsa, 11th-grader from Givat Brenner, explains how eight days of home-like insulation went through as big • "We tried to maintain some kind of routine"

• Naama Simsa, her brother, a friend of four and the isolationist

On Wednesday, two weeks ago, I got up in the morning, and as I washed, I heard a half-dim reading from the floor below and realized that something strange was happening.

The phone beeps far too many times for seven o'clock in the morning, and as I look to see what it says I encounter a flood of messages and out of the blur of sleep I can hardly understand what everyone wants from me. After a few minutes of internalization, the word "isolation" finally begins to seep. The hysteria spreads faster than the disease, and even before the morning coffee starts to make an impact, I get phone calls from family and friends from all over the country who ask me what happened and if I could die.

I spend the next eight days upstairs without leaving the room. Half a consolation, my brother is in isolation too - like all our high school friends, so at least we're not alone.

Immediately my dad bought a stock of protective masks, which became our best companies during this time, along with a half-liter bottle of disinfectant gel. The food routine is also special: we put the food out the door, and after a few minutes when the area is free we open the door and take it.

All in all, we could say that we were trying to maintain some sort of routine: Instead of school, we had online classes and submissions, and my brother and I did training together so as not to completely degenerate. And spending time playing games and the longing to go outside again, that isolation was a lot of things for me - but he never felt lonely.

Naama Simsa, a sophomore at Givat Brenner