Humans of Covid-19

 

Megan Hollasch details her experience travelling abroad to Lewes, England only to be forced out amid the Coronavirus Pandemic of March 2020.

Part 1/3: England

            “When I arrived at the Whiteheart hotel in Lewes England, I was surprised to find that I was staying at the equivalent of a crappy American motel with a roommate from Vermont, of all places.

            The idea of studying abroad hadn’t made me nervous until I was walking into an empty room with no roommate in sight or any type of welcome information. I was alone. The fear of meeting new people snuck up on me almost immediately. I was scared to make friends and be in a completely different country without someone to show me around.

            I called home and I couldn’t stop crying. It’s not like I was super sad, but it was probably the most I had ever cried. The fear of meeting new people was absolutely overwhelming and felt paralyzing in the tiny room. This feeling was new to me, because I had never cried at my home university (Umass) and that was my first experience being away from home. I thought maybe I was subconsciously scared of being in another country.

I definitely had some social anxiety in the first week. Before college I had done everything with my twin sister and I always had friends in highschool. I was never doing things by myself. Not knowing anyone in the program really made me feel, for the first time, that I was truly on my own. To make matters even stranger, more than half the people in my program and the hotel were from different countries.  

            Eventually, I had to get over my fears by going out with people even when I didn’t want to. The first day I heard girls outside the hall and we were supposed to have a welcome dinner, but I really didn’t want to walk downstairs by myself. So I said to myself ‘You got to get out there and pretend to accidentally run into them’ so I opened the door and introduced myself. Right away they invited me to sit with them at the event. I would have been late to the dinner if I had procrastinated any longer in my room.

            I had more fun toward the end of my trip after meeting girls who were slightly more outgoing than my roommate. I met two girls from Canada and California in the communal kitchen one night and we started talking. We ended up going to dinner together and we clicked. They were super outgoing girls and they wanted to go out more than the friends on my floor who didn’t really want to spend money.

            After making these friends, I really had an amazing experience. We travelled to London and saw so many sights. The university that I was attending had a big teacher strike for better pay and the teachers cancelled class a lot. It was a six-week strike so the teachers would alternate which days they were striking on. This worked out for me because I used the time to explore. If my friends were busy I would try to get takeout and try all these restaurants. I ate a lot of great food.”

 

 

 

Post 2/3: Coronavirus Hits

            “When the Coronavirus hit, I thought it was ridiculous to be sent home because all our supervisors told us that a potential lockdown would only last a couple weeks. We all thought we were just going to miss the end of the program and then the summer would be normal. Obviously, we realized after that the world wasn’t going back to normal any time soon.    

            UMass didn’t end up requiring that their students come home. It was only ‘highly suggested’ and once the CDC declared England a level 3 travel advisory almost everyone went home. All the Americans were worried about the borders closing and the uncertainty if they would be closed indefinitely. At first, I wanted to stay and wait it out, but I didn’t really know any of the people who were staying either. One girl was from Italy and Covid-19 was really bad in Italy so most of the people who stayed were too scared to go home.

            My friends and I didn’t panic because we didn’t understand the severity of the situation. We went to London again on some of our last days and saw the Seven Sisters cliffs in Sussex. The mentality was to try our best to do what we can. We weren’t thinking ‘oh my god we have to stay in the hotel until we get to leave.’ We even went to a club.

The day I was supposed to leave, my flight was cancelled. I was planning on going home through the Gatwick airport, but flights were getting cancelled left and right so I had to go through London’s main airport Heathrow. I had woken up early to say goodbye to my friends and all the sudden my dad was calling me and saying that I had to leave immediately to catch my new flight. I had to throw some things in my suitcase and I wouldn’t have gotten there if some girls on my floor hadn’t been leaving for Heathrow at the same time. I wouldn’t have known how to get there if they hadn’t already done the research. We were in such a time crunch I just followed along with their plan and bought tickets as we got to each place. We took a train to Brighton and then a bus to the airport. Apparently the new flight that I was supposed to be on was full, so I had to wait three hours for the next one. I watched a movie on Netflix. The flight that I ended up being on was pretty empty and the airport wasn’t as crowded as I expected.

            On the plane home only one woman was wearing a mask and I didn’t even have hand sanitizer. I remember the flight attendants did not have masks. The plane was so empty that they offered us an extra meal. I really enjoyed the flight because I had the whole row to myself and I was able to drink wine and enjoy the trip. As soon as we got off the plane in America though people in hazmat suits took our temperature.

I wasn’t really afraid of the people in hazmat suits; I thought it was more interesting because it was something that you see on TV. I felt like I was in one of the crime or medical shows I watch. On the flight home, I had the opportunity to think about the entire experience and the opportunities I lost. Our Stonehenge trip was cancelled and I wanted to see it because Stonehenge is so well known and so, so cool, ‘A must see in England.’ I also didn’t get to go to Spain and Italy (my parents had planned a spring break trip) and a couple of the girls on my hotel floor were planning trips for after Spring break. The unknown possibilities of what could have been are crushingly disappointing. I had months left to explore and go on all these adventures and I’ll never know what might have happened.

Post 3/3: Back to Jersey

            When I arrived back home, I was relieved to see the people that I was closest with. My sister was home and I got to spend a lot of time with her. At the beginning of lock down everyone was enjoying the time off. My dad was working from home and as a family we weren’t aware of how fast the virus was spreading.

            After a week or two of being home, everything was fully closed in my town. It didn’t look like things were getting better, but worse. By this time the CDC and our governor hadn’t implemented a mask mandate, but masks were starting to be advised. My dad would go to the grocery store a lot when he was bored. Eventually, I had to say to him ‘Dad this is getting bad, people are dying, you need to wear gloves and sanitize everything.’ We even started making masks. My mom is an avid quilter and after we had made some masks out of bandanas, she told us the bandanas were hard to breathe in because we layered them so much so she made us some stylish ones out of fabric scraps.

Life started to get boring faster than I would have expected. Everyone coming into America was told not to see anyone for two weeks. It was really lonely, but everyone was following the CDC’s guidelines and constantly watching the case numbers online. It was really all anyone could talk about.

            My sister and I went to Starbucks everyday after our two-week quarantine was over because it was the only place that was open. I remember we would go on long drives or take the long way to Starbucks just for something to do. These drives were the only times we left the house by car for two months.

The classes I was taking in England were not strenuous at all. I never had to Zoom because of the time difference and the class structure there is not like American class structure. Only one of my teachers wanted to Zoom, but England is five hours ahead so I emailed her and told her I was an exchange student and she was fine with me not zooming in. My other classes, I remember I was taking Graphic Design, just had one final project that I had four or five weeks to work on.

            Eventually April turned into May and the longest summer ever ensued. I didn’t have to worry about finding an internship because everything was cancelled. None of my friends were doing anything either. My best friend, Riya and I went to the beach every week for two months. The Jersey beaches were closed for a two-week period but reopened and everyone was respectful about being socially distant.

            All in all, my first European adventure was completely unique, crazy and not what I expected at all. It’s funny how our imaginations can’t even begin to comprehend how great study abroad is; and mine certainly didn’t paint London as the incredible city it is. I expected a New York atmosphere like the one I had grown up with, but I found something even better. I still think about my travels even though it’s been over a year. I’ll never be able to forget the spring of 2020. I won’t look back at the year and only remember the suffering of a pandemic, I’ll remember how I felt arriving in London and what an incredible experience I had meeting some really cool people in a brand new city.”