As many of you already know, my study abroad plans got cut short – by a little over a month.
Weeks before my friends and I ended up leaving, we became very aware of lots of other study abroad programs that had been canceled. The most prevalent of which was in Italy. ASU, my university, canceled its study abroad program in Rome and gave students an order to get home within a few days of receiving it.
As worrying as that seemed, I’d be lying if I said any of us seriously thought that was going to happen to us. Talk about the matter sounded like anything from “There’s not even a case in Ireland yet” to “They’re going to have to come get me if they want me to leave.” (And, no, that’s not an exaggeration.)
While I was worried, I also wasn’t at the same time. I sort of fell into the “There’s not even a case in Ireland yet” category and did my best to go about business as usual.
And then it happened – the first case of COVID-19 in eastern Ireland. The best part of that too was that one of my suitemates heard the infected individual attended school and lived in Glasnevin (right where we were essentially.) The individual had apparently just been to Italy on a ski trip and came back with the virus.
Over the next week or so, I was pretty glued to the news. I kept telling myself that if the numbers didn’t rise, everything would be fine. The St. Patricks’s Day parade in Dublin wouldn’t be canceled like politicians were talking about, my parents and best friend would still come to visit at the end of the month (which I had been looking forward to since I got there), we all would go on a pub crawl, and most importantly my study abroad program wouldn’t get canceled.
You all know where this is going, though. The numbers did rise. People did keep getting sick and slowly the toilet paper, bread, pasta and rice in the stores started to go out of stock.
Things went bad much faster than any of us expected. I attended my last class at Dublin City University on March 6, and when I walked home that day I did not think that would be the last time I was on campus.
My friends, Judita and Lucy, and I went on a trip to London we had planned Sunday through Tuesday (you can read more about that here) and when we came back there was talk everywhere that campus wouldn’t be reopening after Spring Break. At that point, I was constantly checking my emails waiting for the study abroad office to tell me I had to come home. And when I tell you my heart stopped every time I received an email from ASU, I wholeheartedly mean it.
Going to bed the Wednesday before I left, I was still hopeful things were going to be fine. Thursday morning, though, everything fell apart. I woke up to multiple calls from my dad at like 4 in the morning my time and texts from my mom saying to call her as soon as I was up. Still not really expecting the worst, I did, and much to my dismay it had finally happened – President Trump declared a travel ban, my parents would not be coming and worst of all, it was time for me to come home.
I’m not gonna lie, I was being pretty stubborn. In my mind, there weren’t even that many cases, what was I supposed to do about my school work and ASU didn’t cancel my program yet so why should I come back?
It didn’t take more than a phone call from dad, though, who chokingly admitted that he “just wanted me to come home because he couldn’t protect me over there” for me to accept what I knew deep down was going to happen eventually anyway.
After a good cry, a phone call to my lovely friend, who let me know that it was going to be okay and a text from my other lovely friend saying “thank you coronavirus” because now she would get to see me a month earlier than she originally thought, I was surprisingly taking it okay.
The next step, though, was getting a ticket home. After a pretty quick call to American Airlines everything was set. I was going to be flying out on Saturday morning and would be home in Phoenix around 6 that night.
That was great until the very next day when Trump made it mandatory for people flying internationally to fly into a handful of specific, pre-approved airports when entering the United States. Since the flight I had just been booked on was not flying into a preapproved airport, I had the lovely pleasure of calling the airline back only to be put on a different flight a day later and charged about $450. 🙂 Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll be flying with that airline unless I have to in the future.
I will say, though, that I was pretty dang excited to be staying an extra day. Which brings me to my next point. The hardest part of it all was realizing I had to say goodbye to the wonderful friends I was really just getting to know.
There were so many things we had dreamed of doing together and so many memories we had already made that leaving suddenly wasn’t exactly ideal. And even though I know I’ll see them again, I have no idea when that will be since I’m all the way in Arizona and they’re all the way in the Czech Republic. From the minute we knew I was leaving, though, we spent every waking minute together. We rode bikes around Phoenix Park, which you can read about here, played dumb games together, accidentally coerced a Thai restaurant into delivering food to us even though we were outside their delivery range and cheers’d as many Guinesses as we could.
These two wonderful humans even went to the airport with me at 2 a.m. and waited with me for almost three hours until I could check my bags.
Which brings me to – the airport. I got to the airport ridiculously early. I’m talking my flight was at 7 a.m. and we got there around 2:30 a.m. Now, no I’m not crazy and no I don’t normally do that, but we had heard from a lot of other students flying home that the security line for people traveling internationally back to the United States from the Dublin airport was taking anywhere from five to six hours. Here is a photo if you don’t believe me.
So I got there very early to be safe rather than sorry. Now, I’m still not sure why, but I didn’t have any problems. Things moved at a normal pace. I think this might have been because I was flying to the London Heathrow airport from Dublin, but I was still surprised to not find any crazy lines in London as well. The whole trip I was also expecting to be screened for COVID-19 – to have my temperature taken or something but nothing happened.
I flew home on March 15, and I’m sure things are very different now, but hardly anything happened out of the ordinary. The only thing we had to do differently was fill out a form before getting off the plane in LA after traveling from London. The form asked us straightforward questions about whether we had been to a highly infected region such as Italy, Iran or China or been in contact with anyone who had the virus. Much to my surprise nothing was even done with the forms. We didn’t have to give them to anyone, put them anywhere and no one collected them. I’m pretty sure mine ended up in the trash when I got home.
Hardly anyone was wearing masks (including myself) and no one was standing 6 feet apart. Again, I’m sure things are very different now at the airports, but I was pretty surprised. I have to say it was pretty hard to come home in the midst of a pandemic when it didn’t really feel like one was happening at all.
I do want to add that a few days after I got home, ASU cancelled my study abroad program, as did most everyone else’s colleges that I know of. All classes switched to online so we were all able to finish our courses and other international students had to return home, including my Czech friends, Judita and Lucy.
As hard as it was to skip out early from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study abroad in another country, at the end of the day, I know the health and safety of both myself and everyone else is so much more important. I may have been quarantined in Arizona when I had plans to be galavanting around Ireland but the bottom line is that I’m safe with the people I love and doing everything in my power to keep other people safe so they can be with the people they love when this is all over.
I hope everyone is being safe and making smart decisions. As bleak as it may seem, if we just hang tight, things will be back to normal before we know it.
Sierra Sage 