Study abroad students return home amidst COVID-19 pandemic

Photo courtesy of Maddie Fancher

By Emma-Cate Rapose

Chaos, stress, masks, and gloves are four words that come to mind for junior Maddie Fancher when asked about her travel experience home from Florence, Italy at the end of February. “It felt like it was Black Friday,” Fancher said. “I arrived at the airport four hours early and the lines were so long that it ended up taking us 3.5 hours to get through. Everyone was wearing a mask, and it was scary seeing that. When we were about to board the plane, the flight was canceled.” Fancher was one of 24 Stonehill students studying abroad in Italy when the Office of International Programs requested they return home on Feb. 25 in response to the spread of coronavirus. Since then, all students studying internationally have returned home, and summer and fall study abroad programs have been canceled, according to the Office of International Programs. After her original flight was canceled, the next flight Fancher could book was not until early the next morning. Despite arriving at the airport half an hour before it opened, she said she still experienced chaos when trying to board her new flight. “There were a lot of people there,” Fancher said. “When the doors opened people ran inside to get to an elevator to get to the front of the check in line. Again, everyone was wearing a mask and gloves.” Unlike Fancher, junior CC Grady, who was abroad at John Cabot University in Rome, had no issues when traveling back home to the United States. “We got to the airport early in anticipation of chaos but ended up sitting around with nothing to do but wait for a few hours,” Grady said. Grady said that she was screened during her connecting flight in Dublin where security asked her where she had been in the last two weeks. However, when she arrived at Logan Airport, she was not screened. “When I got home, I went through zero screening processes and just walked out and went home,” Grady said. Despite not being told at the airport to self-quarantine, Grady followed CDC regulations and spent 14 days quarantined in her house. “Having to self-quarantine for 14 days was really tough,” Grady said. “I just wanted to be able to see my friends but I couldn’t. I had nothing to do other than count down the days until it was over, and then all of a sudden we were back in quarantine and any chance of returning to Stonehill was gone.” Junior Liz Aicardi was interning with the company Handmade in Britain through CAPA: The Global Education Network in London, England, when she was pulled from her program on Thursday, March 12, the day after President Trump enacted travel restrictions to and from Europe. “I honestly knew I was going to come home. The travel ban was the last nail in the coffin for me to be like ‘alright, that’s it, we’re going home,’” Aicardi said. Aicardi said that her program had begun looking into people who had traveled to Italy and Spain during their time abroad, and that eight students had been confirmed infected after traveling to these countries. Although uncertain that she had contact with these students, Aicardi is self-quarantining to ensure that she does not risk exposing the virus to anyone else. “I am safe at home with my family quarantining,” Aicardi said. “I had a lot to look forward to, but my health and safety are my number one priorities. Why would I put that in danger if I could be safe?” While studying at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, junior Olivia Gionet said she did not see COVID-19 as much of a threat, and thought she was safer than the students abroad in Europe. “For a while, I felt like I was safer. Before it got really bad during the middle of March, I thought I was going to be able to make it to the end of the program,” Gionet said. “That obviously was a pipe dream, but there were less cases, people in Australia weren’t talking about it as much, everybody was focusing on Europe - it felt like I could possibly be okay.” Once the middle of March arrived, travel bans popped up constantly, getting more and more restrictive. Gionet said that she struggled to get a flight home because airlines were shutting down and the prices for the flights that were still running were skyrocketing daily. Luckily, Gionet made it home with no issues. Despite her abroad experience getting cut short and having to self-quarantine, Gionet is trying to find the silver lining in things. “I am beyond lucky to have a safe place to go home to, a family that cares for me, and resources to survive, so I can’t complain too much,” Gionet said. “I’ve been trying to think about the positives and everything that I’m grateful for rather than dwell on what could have been. I was so lucky to even experience studying abroad in the first place - those are memories I’ll never forget.”