After a couple of weeks of online school, we knew this wasn’t going to work, and our flights back to China kept getting cancelled so we weren’t expecting to go home anytime soon. We finally got a hold of one customer service person who told us the American was cancelling all flights until at least April (hahaha). So we decided we needed to enroll Alex in the local school to keep him caught up. Let me just say, enrolling a kid in school when their last school was in China is a trip.
We needed so much paperwork, including an original birth certificate, that we have in a “vital document” folder…. in China. The first hurdle was trying to get the birth certificate because we had to order it from Illinois, and they apparently don’t let just anyone have a copy. We asked the school if they could accept a copy until we could get the original–no. Then it was vaccines, Alex has been fully vaccinated, but one shot was given a month too early, so he had to get another shot to make it legit for Florida. My dad had to write a letter saying we were living with them because while it’s our “permanent address” we don’t have a lease or mortgage to prove it. We had to get copies of his grades from China( they don’t use letter grades here). They couldn’t/wouldn’t accept certain forms of identification… and despite all my complaints here, I know we still had it easier than lots of other folks.
In the end, we were able to enroll him, but one of the forms we filled out asked something about why we were changing living in the middle of the year and we asked what we should mark down for it. The secretary at the school said to mark down “temporarily sharing the housing of others due to economic hardship” , and then we crossed it out and put due to pandemic. (Now it’s actually a sub category on the form to fill out- I checked the form to make sure I got the wording right). And low and behold, Alex is given free lunches and offers of counseling because we are refugees, and in a way we were, but not really. He’s put in a 4th grade class, and off he went- no hesitation, just ready to go. He liked his class a lot, made a couple of friends his first day and I think really enjoyed being in a classroom again.
The school was great, not too hard but challenging enough to be good for him. He had a small set back with triangles his first couple of days because they hadn’t learned those yet in China and he had missed the lessons in Florida. The school even had a fundraiser event the second or third weekend we were there and he got to go play games and do activities at the school.
I’ve always known this about Alex, but he is an incredibly resilient kid. He rolls with whatever life throws at him and just keeps going. A new school, new friends, new temporary life in Florida- no problem Mom, I got this.
And then one day…. I’m heading out to do our normal grocery shop for the week, and there’s 1/2 as much traffic as usual- and I go into the Publix- there is a full on panic shop going on. People are throwing all kinds of weird stuff in their carts, I panic bought a 5lb bag of rice because there was only one left and everyone around me was making me nervous. It was like hurricane or blizzard shopping without any bad weather. Pasta was all gone, rice, beans, milk, bread.
Later that day we ( this would be 3/14 or 3/15) found out that we were going into a soft lockdown. Alex’s school went to spring break a week early and everyone was gearing up for their time at home. I mean, looking back now, it’s hard to believe that we all thought it was going to go over so well and be done so quickly. Mark, Alex, and I had our masks from China, which was good because masks, like hand sanitizer and soap, could not be got for love nor money. I ordered disposable masks that took two months to come. I went to obscure stores looking for toilet paper and soap of any kind. And my stories aren’t unique, I’m sure everyone reading this has the same experience.
I never realized how some of our experiences abroad would make us more adaptable to pandemic life- wearing a mask around, not a problem, hand sanitizing constantly, not a problem, staying 6 feet away from everyone- glorious.
And in the beginning, it was easy to make jokes about being refugees and long vacations… but Mark had to figure out how to teach his class online, 12 hours time difference, in our bedroom, sharing the internet with 4 people. We had to jury rig a recording studio for him, Alex had to start online school again, although admittedly it was so much easier in the same time zone, I had to figure out how to work without all my papers and books I’ve collected at my desk at school.
My stepmom would work upstairs in their bedroom (where we rigged up a home office for her, since Alex was living in her real home office), my dad would work in his office, Mark would have our bedroom and I’d work at a chair in the living room. And even with all that, we were lucky. We were together and healthy, and we kept thinking about all the things that could have gone wrong along our journey. I can do almost anything, be happy anywhere so long as we’re together– and this was a struggle, but we had each other. And we had family in different states willing to house us if necessary, my Mom and stepdad even offered to put off selling their house so we could stay if needed.
I don’t want to seem ungrateful, because I am extremely grateful that my parents could and were willing to house us, and we got to spend a lot more time with them than any of us thought we ever would. It took a toll on us though, being away from our home in China, away from our routine, work, and friends, and it’s an experience that few people I know are able to relate to. We have friends in Germany who were in the same position as us– and if they’re ever able to make it back to China I’m sure we’ll have a beer and talk it over.
There were good days and bad days, and some things I still can’t think about without getting a little panicky or sad. But there was joy and new experiences too, and good memories with my kiddo that will always be there.
Traveling Expat Family 