Traveling

International Trips during the Pandemic

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I called them medical workers, for there was no way I could recognize their positions, appearance, or even gender. They all looked the same to me in those plastic white suits covering from head to toe, fully geared up with the gloves, masks, and glasses too. I could only try to know them through their names they wrote with markers on the back of the suits and their eyes half-visible through the protective glasses, of which the other half was hidden behind the vapor formed on the glass surfaces. Despite my effort to get to know them, they clearly didn’t care at all if I would recognize them again when I saw them, for a room card was shoved in my hand, and I was hurried into the elevator while none of them said a word. I soon got used to the quarantine life routine. I got to know when the daily three meals are served on the chair out in the hallway, when I should take my own temperature and text one of the nurses, and how to order takeaway shampoo and towels from nearby shops. The medical workers, still wearing their full gear, kept running to and fro, busy with something I didn’t know about. Probably about cleaning and data recording. To be honest, I haven’t remembered any one of them since my first day at the hotel: all of them looked exactly the same in those suits and it was hard to hear their voices through the door. The fact that all those living in the quarantine hotel were high school students didn’t make them any friendlier, for they never stayed for even a short conversation with anyone. They didn’t seem to care about introducing themselves to us in quarantine, either. All I could see from the peephole on the door was suited people busy running around with carts full of water or food. It’s very easy to get bored in such a repetitive routine and environment. Since coming back home was an emergency decision, I didn’t have a lot of luggage with me and thus no books or art supplies, which I rely a lot on to keep myself entertained while not touching electronic devices. The media described those medical workers outside my door as heroes, and I myself may be in one of those numbers reported to be quarantined. All this experience that I might not be able to go through ever again made everything around me feel unreal, as I couldn’t help but realize the twoweek quarantine was coming to its end and I would not be able to remember anything about anybody there.

On the second-to-last day of the quarantine, someone knocked on my door for the first time and asked if she could come in. I was surprised when I learned she was the supervising nurse that asked me for my temperature every day through text: recognizing her signature on the back of the suit, I realized that I had seen her before in the hallways. “This would be your final testing procedure here in quarantine. The test results will be out tomorrow so you may show it to the airport workers,” she said while poking the long cotton swab in my nostril.

That was the first time I got to see her close: one would imagine shocking beauty within those protective glasses, as it would be written in a romance story. Instead, she had normal dark, calm eyes just like a normal person, a person I would meet on the crowded subway trains without bothering to look back to. Some hair wet with sweat was sticking out of her protective suit, and her eyes were moist, probably because of all the heat and staying up. Those, together with the red marks left by the glasses and the mask, made me wonder how uncomfortable it must be in that gear. When she was about to leave, she reached into her bag on her shoulder, as if searching for something. I was surprised by what she pulled out, though: it was a tiny chocolate bar, something I definitely would not expect a busy medical professional to give to the patient

The Wisco Pilot Traveling

Page 9 International Trips During the Pandemic

by Edward Cao

COVID-19 brought a totally new way of living to society. Words that were rarely used became more common. Activities and our normal ways of doing things became very different such as online classes, zoom meetings, and masks. During COVID-19, travel became one of the biggest challenges for international students. They not only needed to deal with different procedures for entering different countries, but they also had to face the danger of exposure to COVID-19 in the closed plane compartments During that time, many countries chose to control the number of people entering the country by limiting the number of planes that flew to each country. Therefore, not being able to find a plane ticket was one of the most common problems that international students were facing. For example, China decided to cut the number of flights from the U.S. in half. This caused the price of those tickets to increase dramatically: some tickets even cost ten thousand dollars. This forced many of the international students who could not afford the tickets to stay in the U.S. Even after obtaining a ticket, the struggle for international students was not necessarily over. Because of the fear of the spread of the disease, many airline companies added new COVID-19 policies to their boarding requirements. Companies like Delta Airlines and United Airlines added that each passenger has to get a negative result 72 hours before flying in order to get on the plane for an international flight. Besides that, some countries also add their own requirements to make sure that the person is “clean”. For instance, the Chinese Health Department added that whenever someone wants to enter the country, they need to fill a form on the phone before flight in order to get a green health code. The form includes COVID-19 test results “can only be taken in certain Medical Lab”, an antibody test result, the flight number, etc. Before boarding the flight, passengers were asked to fill another form called Customs Code, which includes other information that the Chinese Customs need to know. Most countries required the passengers from international flights to be quarantined for 14 days in the hotel or house to double check. In China, after the plane landed, all passengers were called out by number. Then, the health department workers performed a COVID-19 test again for each passenger. After that, the passengers were separated into small groups, and arranged onto a private bus to quarantine hotels. In the hotel, they received a temperature check twice a day. After all this, the passengers were released from the quarantine. However, some cities with large populations like Beijing and Shanghai required another seven days of home quarantine to make sure that the person was not infected during their domestic journey. Although all this limitation looks inconvenient and complex, they were all done for public safety because controls the separation of viruses and prevents people from being infected. Each life is important, and governments are doing their best to stop this pandemic. They do not want to see the separation between families, or the loss of someone’s life.

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she is responsible for. I took it and expressed my gratitude towards her hard work during my stay and the chocolate, of course. I was sure she smiled to me after I said it, although I couldn’t really see her face. I stared hard at the chocolate bar. This hero, one of many I have read about on the news, would probably never meet me again, and I don’t think she would care about texting me back since I’m only one of her many patients. However, another thought hit me as I was packing up my luggage: what if I have met her before? Or, what if I meet her again in the future somewhere? She was just a normal person living a normal life, and yet the efforts she had given in her work have made a great impact on others around her. Once again geared up in my glasses and mask, I was on the bus heading back to the airport, only this time I was going directly back home. I couldn’t help but look around me at all the people walking by, wondering what they do and what they have done: are they like the nurse and those medical workers I met, who committed so much to their jobs and influenced so many of their patients? Could they be doing great things that others aren’t doing or don’t care to learn about? Thinking of that, I started to feel a growing sense of respect towards everyone around me: they may seem plain and normal, but no one would know how great they can be and what good things they can do.