Life Abroad in Asia and Australia During the Coronavirus Crisis

Caitlinepstein415/ March 24, 2020/ Asia, Oceania, Study Abroad/ 1 comments

Now that I am back at home in North Carolina in self-isolation for 14 days, I have plenty of time to reflect on the fragment of my Spring semester I was able to have in the midst of the rise of the Covid-19 virus. Here is my coronavirus story that stretches from January to March, and takes place across Vietnam, Taiwan, Australia, and now the United States.

Vietnam

Back in Vietnam in early January, the coronavirus was just a whisper. A couple people messaged me with articles about a strange new virus slowly spreading through central China. I brushed off talk of the virus, not worried about it in the slightest. People weren’t talking about it in the streets, and I thought nothing about my layover in Shanghai on my way to Ho Chi Minh City. It was a simpler time.

Read about my carefree travels in Vietnam -> Ho Chi Minh City, Hoi An, Ninh Binh, Hanoi

Taiwan

To kick off our Spring semester with the LIU Global China center, we met up in Taiwan for two weeks. When I arrived in Taiwan on January 20th, I was still largely unconcerned about the virus. I’m not sure my classmates and I even talked about it the first day or two.

That silence didn’t last for long, though. The virus soon started to creep into our conversations, and we all started to get more and more messages from concerned friends and family back home. On January 22nd, my mom asked if there were “any concerns about the virus outbreak in China,” and I responded that the school hadn’t said anything about the virus yet, and that I was hoping that the media was simply overblowing the situation.

Boy, was I wrong.

On the 23rd, Taiwan had just one case that they caught in quarantine in an airport, but we were still not too concerned, and continued on to Yilan County to celebrate Lunar New Year with host families. I read reports every day that we were with our host families of the growing number of cases and deaths in China, and on the 2nd day of the Lunar New Year, my professor that was leading our Taiwan trip told me that he was in talks with the university, and that everything was up in the air.

On the 26th, a high up at LIU’s Post campus called two of our visiting students personally and offered them spots at one of the other Global locations. At this point, we still hadn’t heard anything, and we were frustrated with the uncertainty and being left in the dark. It was that night that I sent my mom a message saying that “the virus pretty much dominates a lot of our conversation. It seems to grow everyday and we’re headed to the country that is the epicenter.”

It was the morning of the 27th when shit really hit the fan…the CDC and the State Department issued a level 3 travel advisory for all of China, and LIU Global’s typical policy is not to send us to places with travel advisories of 3 or above. We all kind of spiraled into a panic, essentially knowing that we wouldn’t be going to China as planned. It was nearly impossible to concentrate as our professor handed out masks and loaded us on a bus to go to the Lanyang Museum. At the museum, we were temperature checked upon entry, and I wandered around the museum not comprehending a single word I read as my professor met with school administrators through Zoom on the ground floor.

That afternoon, we all sat in my professor’s living room in Yilan County in Taiwan and listened as our dean explained to us that we would not be going to Hong Kong or China, and that instead we could choose to go to Australia or New York. Our minds whirled with the shock of the entire course of our semester being upended and all of the logistical issues that arose.

Was the school going to pay for our flights? Where would we live? What would happen with all of our stuff still in China from the previous semester? What classes would we take in Australia and how would the course offerings affect our minor requirements? Would we need to come up with the nearly $2000 difference in room and board costs for the Australia and New York programs? How would we get leftover money out of our Chinese bank accounts? How are we going to impact the 6 students that originally chose to be in Australia this semester?

Fortunately, all of these questions had answers, even if it took awhile to get those answers. Things were complicated, and it was a really emotional time, but we did our best to prepare ourselves for a move to Australia in just 5 days while still focusing somewhat on our academic programming in Taiwan. Fortunately, we were able to bond over the crappy experience and fun things our professor threw into the programming, like a group hotpot meal and doing KTV (private room karaoke) together.

On February 2nd, we said goodbye to five students that wouldn’t be going with us to Australia and to our professor and his wife before heading to the airport outfitted with masks and packages of disinfectant wipes. We boarded our shitty Scoot airlines flight through Singapore to Gold Coast Australia, and walked off of our massive dreamliner plane many hours late straight onto the sunny tarmac in a brand new country.

Our alternate reality in Australia, or timeline D as my classmate Eli likes to call it, had begun.

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Read about our time in Taiwan here -> Celebrating Lunar New Year

Australia

When we got to Byron Bay, we moved into our new houses, had orientation, and threw ourselves into classes the very next day. The main concern of my classmate Sara and I those first few weeks in Byron Bay was our stuff stuck in China. Her laptop was still there, so she was using a borrowed one from the school, and my asthma medications and camera were there. I wanted my camera badly for a media class I am taking, but the medications I had with me were soon going to run out, and the ones in China would be necessary.

Unfortunately, we found out on February 5th that Zhejiang University in Hangzhou where our stuff was located was on full lockdown – students had to apply to be able to leave or enter campus, and had to submit to health checks at the gates. The entire city of Hangzhou was also split into sectors, and people were not allowed to move between them without paperwork.

With those restrictions, it seemed unlikely that we would ever get our stuff, but we were also worried about professors, staff, and friends that we left behind in Hangzhou without being able to give them a proper goodbye. They sent messages reassuring us about their health, but it was difficult not to think of them, their health, and the life we could have had there.

Two weeks later, while on a class trip to Melbourne, we video called the China director, Vivian, to work out what needed to be sent where. My stuff was condensed into two bags, but some of my classmates had stuff scattered about our center. Eventually, we worked it out, and the first batch of our stuff shipped out on February 19th. Disappointingly, this did not include my camera as the shipping company would not ship batteries, nor my medication because the company pulled it all out and sent it back to the university before it even left Hangzhou.

So, I found myself paying 70 AUD for a doctor’s appointment to get prescribed new asthma medication, and then another 70 AUD for the prescriptions. Hopefully at some point I am reimbursed for those things by our travel insurance through the school, but they are probably swamped with claim requests right now in the midst of the virus madness.

On March 1st, the second batch of stuff was sent through a third party carrier in Hong Kong, so my camera and medications were finally on their way. On the 3rd, I got home from Taco Tuesday to find the first batch of stuff sitting in my living room. It was so, so exciting to have my prescription glasses, my converse, jewelry, and a lot more clothes options. We had already bought some new clothes at the thrift stores in town because I had only brought a bit of clothing to fit into my travel backpack for Vietnam, and not all of it was suitable for life in a beach town.

On March 5th, while I was in Sydney, my camera arrived. My medication, on the other hand, got rejected by Australian customs and sent back to China. I understand why, as that box of medication included 3 months worth of a steroid controllant, and 7 metered dose rescue inhalers. Countries don’t tend to like it when you send large amounts of any medication across their borders. Despite disappointment over the medication, I was over the moon to be reunited with my beloved camera, and it seemed like things were looking up.

Around the time our stuff got to us, we found out that the LIU Global Italy program was shutting down and sending its students to LIU’s Brooklyn campus. They left within 3 days of finding out, and they were understandably crushed. My semester in Italy was my favorite semester by far, and I would have been devastated to have to leave after just over a month there. One of the visiting students from LIU Post that was with us in Taiwan that went to Italy decided to come to Australia, making it his 3rd continent in just 6 weeks. This student, Jacob, had never been out of the country before going to Taiwan, so he was getting a breakneck introduction to travel and resiliency. The other students were quarantined in an old dorm building on their own for two weeks, basically right up until LIU shut down all of its campuses and moved classes to online.

For us in Australia, those problems still seemed distant, and I found myself finally embracing Byron Bay. I was frustrated with the town for the first bit I was there – it rained nearly non-stop for the first 2 weeks, it is a hippie beach town with little diversity, and it is not Hangzhou. However, after awhile I settled in by learning to like the beach, enjoying my bike rides into town, loving my beautiful house, joining a yoga studio, diving into my studies, and having fun with my classmates.

This new-found bliss lasted about 2 weeks before LIU decided that all nonessential travel would be canceled, which included our 2.5 week trip to Bali, Indonesia. We found out about this cancellation from a mass email from the school on the way to plant trees, just hours before our director planned to tell us in person. We were all pretty disappointed, as this trip was going to include a ton of incredible experiences with local organizations and students. That night, we had a big meeting with all of our staff and professors to brainstorm alternate trips within Australia as well as a visa-run to New Zealand so that we would not overstay our Australian visas. We really thought we were staying…

Then, the United States threw a wrench in those plans by announcing it would be closing its borders to Europe, and we were thrown into a new round of uncertainty over how the university would react. We spiraled into a panic yet again, this time dragging the 6 original Australia students down with us. We could hardly sleep as our director met with administrators at 11pm on March 12th. In the morning when we woke up, it was to news of a stay of execution. Our director had fought for us to stay, arguing that we were safer in the Australia than the US, and that we could continue our education as it was meant to be experienced. We breathed a sigh of relief and went on with life as normal as possible.

Then, that weekend, New Zealand announced that all international arrivals would be required to self-quarantine for 14 days, and we fell into doubt and fear again as we would be unable to make a visa run. That Monday we still knew nothing from the school, and we distracted ourselves on an absolutely lovely field trip to Nimbin, the nearby hippie capital of Australia. We visited local organizations there and ended the day with a pizza dinner up at our professor’s house high up on a gorgeous mountain. We ate our pizza and laughed under a double rainbow, which we took as a hopeful sign.

That night, our director had another late-night meeting with the school, and they decided that we would simply end our semester early on April 22nd as the first batch of Australian visas were set to expire. We still planned to go to the Great Barrier Reef, the Outback, and a 2 week-long permaculture course in Nimbin, the alternative we came up with to replace Bali. Another stay of execution on Tuesday, March 17th, and we were super happy about it. It was a truly great day – I went skydiving in the morning (it was AMAZING), we found out we would be staying for the time being, and we went to Taco Tuesday. I went home that night in a great mood, did my readings for class the next day, and went to bed with little worries.

In the morning, on March 18th, I was in high spirits as I biked into town for class. It was when we sat down for class and I saw our director’s face that my heart sunk. Overnight, airlines had announced that they were axing their flight routes between Australia and the US starting on March 30th. In the blink of an eye we found ourselves scrambling to find flights back to the United States as soon as possible. Within the hour, nearly all of us had a flight home or to a classmate’s house. It was over, and we would be headed home to do classes online.

I felt numb until the next day, when we had our farewell lunch and group meeting right before the first batch of students headed to the airport. At that final meeting, right by the beach, I sobbed as we said our goodbyes to professors and friends. I could barely hold myself together as I biked home and packed through the tears.

On Friday morning, I got up at 8 am to say goodbye to one of my closest friends and housemate, Eli. He was set to fly to San Francisco through Auckland, New Zealand with some of our other classmates to stay at Skylar’s house in the Bay Area. My other housemate, Aliyah, and I waved goodbye to the airport bus, thinking we wouldn’t see them again until we met again in New York.

Welp, we were wrong. Those poor kids got to the airport only to find out that overnight, New Zealand decided to ban all foreigners, even for transit flights through the country. This meant that they were all out of a flight back to the US, and the airline was unable to help them in the least. They were offered flight options costing up to $54,000. Yes, the words FIFTY-FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS came out of the mouth of an airport representative to a group of college students. What a joke.

So, I met them back at one of the group’s houses in Byron Bay, armed with 2 bottles of wine, a carton of ice cream, and a phone to try and help them look for any and all affordable flights out of the country. We gathered with our director and health and safety coordinator for HOURS looking for flights. Nearly every time we clicked on a flight, the price would shoot up by thousands of dollars. By 5 that day, we had found everyone a flight, but they were not and are not ideal. Some were to go through Honolulu, where many flights to the continental US were and are being canceled. Even worse, Eli’s new flight is not until Thursday, March 26th, and now with Australian states shutting down their borders, it is unclear whether or not he’ll be able to board his flight from the Gold Coast airport, which is just over the border of New South Wales and Queensland. Hopefully in a few days I can update this post with good news that he made it safely onto US soil.

That night, I watched my last Australian sunset on Tallow Beach by my house with Eli, and then headed to bed so I could wake up at 3:30 am to head to the airport. Kendall was flying home with me to Charlotte through Sydney, San Francisco, and Chicago, and my other classmate Skylar managed to get a seat on our flights through to San Francisco. We were nervous as hell about our flights actually working out, but by some miracle, they did.

We ran into some of our other classmates in Sydney as they flew out to layovers in Houston and Los Angeles, and then we slogged through a 14 hour flight to San Francisco. Suddenly, we were back in the US.

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Read about non-coronavirus related experiences in Australia -> Byron Bay, Melbourne, Sydney

The United States

Finally on US soil, Kendall and I sped through customs and security to make our flight to Chicago in just under two hours. When we went through customs, we were asked ZERO questions about where we came from or our health. We were given ZERO instructions or guidelines regarding self-isolation, and that further solidified my certainty that the US is way in over its head, and has no idea what the fuck it is doing against this virus.

After a 4 hour flight to Chicago and a 2 hour flight on a minuscule regional jet to North Carolina, we made it to Charlotte, and I was able to give my mom a huge hug down by baggage claim. I was sad to be back in the United States in the Spring for the first time in 3 years, but I was relieved that we made it home in one piece with no complications.

Now, it has been two days at home in self-isolation that all of my classmates and I are doing out of personal responsibility and despite a lack of direction from the US government. Kendall and I have spent most of our time trying to overcome our jet-lag, but we’ll spend the coming days trying to find ways to stave off boredom, stay on top of school work, and start online classes. We have the added challenge of doing classes with professors that are in Australia’s timezone and getting in enough class hours when many of them were previously going to be satisfied by trips and experiences, but we’re going to hope for the best on Zoom calls.

We are only just over halfway through this semester, and it has already been some of the most stressful weeks of my life. The emotional whiplash has been brutal, and one of the only upsides to being home is an end to the uncertainty surrounding this semester. There will be a lot more uncertainty to face surrounding my fall semester, when we are all supposed to do an internship abroad, but that is a problem for another day. Now, the best we can do is focus on staying healthy and being grateful for all that we have – my wonderful family, a home with comfy beds and a full fridge and pantry, our health and health insurance if needed, parents with jobs that they can do from home, classes we can take online, and so much more.

It is not lost on me that so many people have it so, so much worse. It is heartbreaking that so many people are suffering and dying from this virus, but it is also gut wrenching to watch lives be upended and people worry about their ability to survive without jobs and the access to housing and food that schools provide college and elementary students. I can only hope that people take it upon themselves to self-isolate in their homes, and that the government is able to provide aid not to corporations, but to people.

If you made it through this incredibly long blog post, thanks for sticking with it. Wishing you health and wishing for all of us that this crisis is soon just a painful memory.