I’ve been putting off writing on here because I’m in a bit of a funk- so bear with me while I explain the funk and then I’m going to skip some posts to post something that makes me very happy and I will go back and cover other adventures later.
I was very lucky to get to go to a meeting and begin my fieldwork in Uganda in January. The downside is that I had to miss my birthday, and my dear and lovely husband’s 40th birthday. This trip also became the longest I was away from Alex, 10 days total with travel. I will write the next post about Uganda. I came home from Uganda, did laundry, and our family flew to Hong Kong to enjoy what was left of Alex’s spring festival break from school.
By the time I got home from Uganda, we had already heard about coronavirus, but we weren’t really concerned yet. We did think about breathing the same air as everyone on the airplane, so we bought masks to wear on the plane ride– and the day after we got to Hong Kong, they were starting to discuss closing the borders to keep the infection out. We ended up cutting our trip short (I’ll cover the Hong Kong trip in another post) because we found out that we couldn’t go home to Haining, and we were going back and forth between riding things out in Bangkok or heading back to the US. We overall decided on the US and our original tickets to Miami got cancelled the morning of our flight because that was the day the US carriers stopped flying to and from mainland China and hong Kong. We were lucky enough to get moved to Cathay Pacific flight to San Francisco and then to Miami (on the eve of the Super Bowl between San Francisco and Someone else, being hosted in Miami).
We know that we are lucky to have somewhere to go (Huge shout out to all our friends and family who offered to put us up, and can’t thank my dad and stepmom for hosting us for what has already been a month and we don’t know how much longer it will last).
Alex’s school in China started online classes– so did our university, but the online classes for Alex don’t work for us because of the time difference, so we enrolled him in the local school here in Miami. He’s very happy at the new school, he’s made some good friends and seems well liked overall. There’s been a bit of adjustment with classes, some things are new to him because the school in China taught them in a different order, but he’s getting to learn Spanish at this school and that makes him pretty happy.
Mark is still teaching his class, it’s just being done via online lectures- he’s looking forward to getting back to normal so that he can teach his class in front of the students.
I’m struggling to find a routine that works for me getting work done here, it feels like a long vacation and that makes it hard to get motivated. With the exception of the short 2 day turnaround time between Uganda and Hong Kong, I’ve been away from my home for 6 weeks already and we’re looking at another month probably…. it gets me a little down. And I miss Chinese food, I could go for some hotpot right now… or a big bowl of noodles.
Our friends in China are all doing well, no one we know has gotten sick, and most of our friends who were able to leave did. We still have friends back there stuck in their houses for the last 6 weeks waiting to return to work and school- (Hi Marco, Emma and Rachel!) and we think about all our friends at home and hope you are staying healthy and dealing with the boredom!
So that’s the update, we’re all fine, I’m behind on posts but I will start getting caught up now.
Traveling Expat Family 