Waking up on the morning of March 14 with 87 missed phone calls from her parents, Olive Swan, a current University of Idaho senior and my roommate in Lyon, France, was told to leave the country within 24 hours. She had seen me leave four weeks earlier as COVID-19 began to reach Italy, only a short train ride from our new city. At 4 a.m. on Feb. 18, I waited for an Uber outside Residence André Allix, the first time I’d been in a car since arriving in France six weeks prior. It would be taking me to the airport.
Trains, buses and our feet had been the mode of transportation that we relied on during those first weeks to take us to museums and bakeries, then further to Paris and the United Kingdom. That was all ending months earlier than planned now.
I had decided to leave for personal health reasons while the pandemic was still underestimated. Experiencing a health care system abroad brought unique challenges with language barriers and a general lack of understanding for how to seek care. To avoid this, I risked unknowns for my financial situation and graduation plan to return home.
I never expected a month later I would be considered lucky for leaving my study abroad experience early. Nor did I anticipate being followed across the world by COVID-19.
Before the wave
This story of being uprooted began before Swan was scrambling to get home in March, and even before I chose to leave in February. Students from UI, including Tyler Moye, faced the pandemic first in China, where COVID-19 originated.
A week before his departure from Shanghai, China Jan. 28, Moye noticed elderly community members were no longer socializing in their front yards. Soon he was informed that China was locking down. He needed to leave.
“We couldn’t even get food because none of the grocery stores were open… so (the study abroad program) sent us oranges and apples and Chinese snacks, and it definitely wasn’t enough to really be living on,” Moye said.
Though he had to flee China, he didn’t give up his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity yet.
Instead of returning home, Moye flew to Taipei, Taiwan, to complete a different Mandarin-language immersive program to stay on track for graduation. When he arrived, he saw little to no sign of a pandemic. Schools and businesses were open with minimal social distancing.
“I was in this oasis,” Moye said, praising the immediate Taiwanese response to the outbreak that allowed the virus’s impact to remain minimal.
As COVID-19 cases continued to rise across the world, Moye was confused to see other countries were not nearly as well-prepared.
Limbo
“For this earliest group, there was a quick solution, it seemed like,” Dr. Bill Smith, director of UI’s International Studies program, said.
Prior to mid-March, the spread of COVID-19 appeared to only subtly impact the Western Hemisphere. Every student impacted had a unique situation until the U.S. had its major shutdown, Kate Wray Chettri, UI director of Education Abroad, said.
Though students like Moye and myself were still concerned about finishing our degrees, this was manageable for UI’s study abroad program.
“People have had to come home from study abroad for military coups or there’s a volcanic eruption… so this is work we had done before,” Smith said.
No one was ready for the scale and magnitude of this pandemic, but students and staff abroad were among the least prepared. Many found themselves in a state of limbo.
“I called my mom, I was crying, everybody was crying,” Reece Christman, a UI junior who studied abroad in Viterbo, Italy, last semester, said.
Instead of seeing her mom on vacation in Italy the following week, she would be coming home.
Christman then had one week to change her flight and prepare to leave Italy. As the virus spread through Europe, other programs began to consider a shutdown as well.
The U.S. State Department said to come home. UI hadn’t been in contact, and the University Studies Abroad Consortium (USAC) study abroad program in Lyon wouldn’t call it off, Swan said, remembering her confusion.
This occurred as UI staff, including Smith and Wray Chettri, attempted to contact over 100 people across the world that were affiliated with the university — a difficult task that required late-night and weekend phone calls with scared faculty, students and parents.
As a result, a disconnect between programs and students lasted weeks before the final shutdown left Swan and others rushing to return to the United States within 48 hours.
Choosing to leave for home before study abroad programs shut down was a financial unknown for many, but staying eventually meant paying thousands in airline fees.
Others faced a reverse issue as foreign students visiting Moscow for the semester, Wray Chettri said. In these situations, options varied from a shelter-in-place order to a 48-hour period to return home. No one had an easy choice.
” I called my mom, I was crying, everybody was crying.”
Home Sweet Hotspot
Moye believed he found a perfect alternative when he arrived in Taipei, but after two months, he was instructed by the U.S. State Department to decide immediately whether to stay in Taiwan or come home to a country where COVID-19 cases were uncontrollable.
“We had students abroad where the risk wasn’t as strong as it was in Seattle,” Smith said.
Preparing for the worst, Moye packed toilet paper.
Upon arrival, Moye dealt with reverse culture shock alone. The resources that typically help ease the disorienting adjustment back into a routine at home were focused instead on cleaning up the aftermath of programs closing early.
Christman quarantined for two weeks upon her return while friends didn’t understand why she was taking COVID-19 so seriously.
Swan watched France from afar, feeling like her host country was combatting the pandemic more effectively than her home country. The International Programs Office faced COVID-19-induced budget cuts. Smith focused on rearranging graduation requirements for International Studies students whose required study abroad trip, was no longer possible.
I lost the feeling of security that I first felt arriving back home. I thought I escaped an oncoming wave six weeks earlier, but the United States was now the hotspot of the world.
Going Forward
As policy and regulations in the U.S. slowly caught up to the rapidly spreading pandemic, changes started happening more quickly for study abroad students, Smith said.
“Normal rules didn’t apply,” Wray Chettri said.
Program requirements were adjusted for students no longer able to complete a study abroad experience, language immersion or senior seminars abroad.
Study abroad programs began instructing remotely once students returned home —though that meant logging into a class streamed from a far-off land at 3 a.m. in many cases —and offered refunds when possible.
Many once-in-a-lifetime experiences will never be recovered, but there was a silver lining in the dark cloud.
“Normal rules didn’t apply.”
Christman said despite the pain of leaving, she would do it again for those two months in Italy.
Looking back, Moye realized he’d gained some experiences unique only to a worldwide pandemic. Not all once-in-a-lifetime experiences were lost.
“I was the only person on the metro in Shanghai (and) I’m probably one of the only people to ever experience that,” Moye said.
Story By Hanna Jackovich
Photos By Dani Moore
Design By Bonnie Lengele