Have you ever experienced that everything is falling apart, and all the familiar things just drifted away all of a sudden? That was the feeling I had in the first two months of the COVID-19 outbreak. When the outbreak started, the school tried best to send all the students back home. Almost all the student went back to where their homes are safe, I am one of these people who haven’t gone home yet. I miss the campus with amazing people as well as my home in Taiwan.
Everything started at the end of the Chinese New Year break, it is the time when the outbreak got serious and the school asked us to go back home. Due to the difficulty to practice compulsory military service in Taiwan, I have no choice but not going back home. At that time, I was in Hong Kong with my friends. I needed to decide where to go before the visa went expired, it was really difficult to find a place to stay in such a short time. The principal and my national committee even asked the UWC LPC in Hong Kong to host me, but unfortunately, due to the safety consideration, I was rejected. Then, my dad found a friend that would help me, but then they found out that there is not enough space for me to live there. At that time, I was so frustrated and anxious about all this thing. But luckily, with the offer from the DP2 student Aidan, I decided to go to Korea to live with him, his family, and three other schoolmates.
I am now far away from school and home, stay in south Korea with Ursula, a DP1 from Peru, Aidan, a DP 2 from America, and his family. My visa is going to be expired in early May, which is a problem. But I can’t make any travel plan now since all the countries are locked down and there is a travel ban in China. I would wait until late April to check the travel restriction in China and countries nearby then decide what to do accordingly.
I have spent here 2 months right now stay in South Korea. I can only say that I miss all the things on the campus now. I never experienced a pandemic before nor felt this way before. Surprisingly, I miss UWC CSC more than home during the COVID-19 pandemic. This time is also the first time I arrange my flight myself and living in a foreign country with another family (aside from the campus). All these things are new and challenging, and sometimes I think I wouldn’t experience all these crazy things if I didn’t go to UWC. All these things that happened in this incredibly surprising adventure not only made me feel like a more independent individual, I also learned things that could help me in the future.
Along this way, I appreciate the school look after me and understand my current situation. They gave me the advice to help me go through all this traveling and living issues, sometimes they email to check whether we are doing ok or not and asked if we need any kind of help. And the distance learning program is not bad and it’s open for the comment, so we could tell teachers what they could have done differently to improve our experiences. Most importantly, Aidan and his family are hospitality and treat us like their sons and daughters. They feed us, take us out to relax, and doing Easter activities which I never had a chance to experience. I am happy to live with them and I couldn’t ask for more.
Last but not least, I wouldn’t forget people that helped me along this way and would try to make this grace a motivation to make this world a better place.