Global Reunification

GLOBAL REUNIFICATION DURING A PANDEMIC

International Students’ Virtual Updates on Their COVID-Adjusted Lives

By Hyunkyu Eddie Choi ’22 APIA Major Editor

It’s training day and I am sprinting on the top of the mountains. I catch my breath and glance at my comrades, who return eye contact in total exhaustion. We all share a brief moment of solidarity, when it starts pouring out of the blue. It’s almost as though God was listening to us. Training is to be halted temporarily. We’re told to put on our green raincoats, covered in mud and passed down for generations in my base. I am suddenly surrounded by its earthy scent and dampened fabric, and can’t help but look back at life in the swamps of William & Mary. I wonder how my friends are doing. Has the campus changed at all? Is everyone with whom I worked in the dining hall still there? My two military gap years are coming to an end, and all these questions are about to be answered. I close my eyes and point my nose at the sky, and I start smiling from ear to ear as I am tickled by raindrops. I can’t wait to get back to school and resume my life. Fast forward to half a year later, and I am back in Williamsburg, Virginia. And if you haven’t been living under a rock, you are most likely able to deduce that my excitement was rendered futile. Why? Well, COVID-19. Many of my American friends were able to come back to the area and I was actually able to catch up with some of them safely according to protocols. When it comes to my international student peers, on the other hand, the story is flipped to the opposite direction. But we are living in 2020 after all. And though not as intimate, I can still utilize technology to catch up with them. So that’s exactly what I did. I interviewed four different international students who had vastly different stories to share in regards to the coronavirus: Wayne Wu (‘21 Economics and Mathematics major), Abeer Ayoub (‘21 Theatre major), Eddie Kim (‘21 Economics major), and Kyuwon Kang (22’ Music and Psychology major). The first thing I asked my friends was where they stayed after the school evacuated students, and what that process was like. WAYNE WU: I went to my roommate’s family house in Chesapeake, VA. I could not go home to China because of travel restrictions. Luckily, I have several friends from Chesapeake, and I decided to change places every two weeks because I did not want to cause too much inconvenience to any family. After a while I settled in another friend’s family house. He and his siblings all moved out, so there was a spare bedroom for me. It was fun to live with my friends’ families but having to pack up so frequently was definitely tiring, so it’s good to finally settle in one place. Overall, it was a good time. Wayne is technically my first on-campus college friend. He and I moved into our freshman residence hall before everybody else due to the earlier international movein date. As of now, he is living in an oncampus dorm with three of his friends. It was really heartwarming to not only catch up with him, but also to see how optimistic he has remained despite circumstances being confusing and rather burdensome. I also have friends who, for very understandable reasons, decided not to return to campus. ABEER AYOUB: Right now, I am home in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I decided not to return to campus because I didn’t feel safe going back. I wasn’t sure how well a socially distanced semester would work out. I also felt like it would be better for my mental health to study this semester in a safe space. Abeer and I had connected GGV halls freshman year, and that allowed for latenight study sessions that would often turn into rants about visas and other problems facing international students. Though we are not in the same region, I am glad to know that she is at a place where she can take care of herself and feel safer. Granted, most students’ courses are online this term. So it’s extremely easy for one to assume international students’ current lifestyles are more or less the same, but that really is not the case at all. What, then, are some difficulties that are exclusive to international students (who decided to stay home)?

EDDIE KIM: Definitely the time difference. Waking up at 6AM to join a Zoom call for an Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory class was challenging at first, but I learned to balance out my biorhythm to make this feasible. Eddie is like a celebrity to me. When I first got to W&M, people would tell me about this “other Korean Eddie” who had gone to the army. He returned as soon as I went away to fulfill my service, and now that I am back, this term was supposed to mark our first term together. Talking to Eddie reminded me of Kyu, who also has a peculiar friendship with me in that we have never been on campus together; whether it be that she would take a gap year while I was here or that I would enlist in the army when she returned, our timing never aligned. Like Eddie, the reason we were able to connect was our status as Korean international students at W&M. Kyu was already taking a gap year to build career experience and has decided to extend it due to the pandemic. According to her, she just feels a lot safer in South Korea. KYUWON KANG: The Korean government definitely has everything under control. From the moment you arrive in South Korea, you are required to take the COVID test. You are then escorted to your quarantine venue, which could be your home (if you have one), a hotel room, an airbnb, or even an official quarantine center. At the airport, you also have to download a governmentrun quarantine app, on which you would record your temperature and location. If you are caught outside your venue during your 2 week quarantine, you are fined. Also, if there is a confirmed case near you, the government sends out warning messages including relevant information about the patient. Abeer had similar things to say about Saudi Arabia. ABEER AYOUB: The government is doing quite a good job handling the virus. All schools and colleges are online this semester, and flights for the most part are closed. In the summer, they implemented a policy where everyone who entered the country had to quarantine for two weeks in

a hotel before they went home. They also had complete lockdowns and curfews. At some point, people were prohibited from leaving their homes without special permission. Right now, we don’t have as many cases and the restrictions are mostly gone. The only rule we have is the mandatory wearing of masks. For some, the decision to remain in their country of residence extended to factors unrelated to health; namely, COVIDinduced racism and aggression played a significant role. EDDIE KIM: I’m saddened to say that I’ve seen and heard people blaming the virus on Chinese and other East Asian students. I am not, and will never be, willing to face that kind of treatment. KYUWON KANG: I think when Trump referred to the virus as the “Chinese virus”, it just created more divisions across the country. Frankly, I was immensely discouraged upon realizing that America still has a long way to go. To be honest, I really don’t think the U.S. is handling the virus seriously. I still can’t believe some people are refusing to wear masks because it’s their “right”. It seems that the idea of individual freedom is blinding certain people from recognizing their priorities and collectively fighting the virus. Wearing a mask is not just for one individual. It’s also for everyone else the person could encounter. Though my friends have more or less gotten accustomed to their pandemicadjusted way of living, they realize that the coronavirus is far from gone and have multiple concerns when it comes to their future.

EDDIE KIM: My concern is definitely my health, as I have asthma and other respiratory diseases. ABEER AYOUB: I am very concerned about people’s health and safety, racism and aggression, as well as the climate. Also, as a theatre major, I can’t help but be concerned about the future of live theatre after the pandemic. WAYNE WU: Honestly, as of right now I’m most concerned about how the virus will affect employment and graduate school application next year. I’ve seen my friends who graduated in 2020 unable to find a job, and I’ve heard of schools cutting funding to grad school programs. I hope next year things will be better! Indeed, we cannot be certain about how things will turn out in the near future. What we know for sure, however, is that 2020 has been a rough year to say the least, and the last thing anyone needs right now is negativity. WAYNE WU: I just hope people can stop pointing fingers, put on masks, and beat this pandemic together.