Covid Happens

Our story starts a short bump along the road from my last post. We did our airport covid tests and received two immediate negative results. So we packed, cleaned, shopped, cleaned in a frenzy of less than 24-hours because I refused to jinx our chances beforehand. 

Early the next morning we journeyed to the airport, an airport that laughed in the face of social distancing. We ate our breakfast in a jam-packed restaurant, sat down and waited in a jam packed departure lounge and then got on our plane. Which was the only place not jam packed. 

Eight uneventful hours later, we landed at a jam packed JFK to repeat the process in reverse. Getting through customs was laughably the same as ever. We queued like sardines, packed tightly into our little can. No one checked our documents, vaccination records, negative lateral flow tests. 

We picked up our luggage, walked straight through customs where the two TSA employs were more worried about their rapid-fire gossip than anyone passing by. We jumped into the world's most disorganised security queue that snaked and snaked and snaked again, only to have a queue jump access point for a range of families with prams who proceeded to cut in front of us. 

With 10 minutes left before we boarded and 1hr, 30 minutes into our 2hr scheduled layover, we finally made it to the front. And a nice TSA man opened a new window to let our panicky asses through. But then he tussled with another TSA woman who WAS NOT IMPRESSED with the setup for her afternoon. And Paul intervened because we were bricking it and was immediately, rudely, precisely shut down. We were told to calm down whilst the queue we'd exited moved swiftly and we stayed stuck in one place. 

So Paul did a thing that Paul never does. He played the kidney card, lifted his shirt and lamented: 'I need to take medicine for my health condition. Look at my scar!' He was shut down again: 'you should have prepared for this, sir...' to which I cut him off, showing our passports and telling him that OUR airline arranged OUR connection this way. I was stressed. Clearly he saw that. Because another agonisingly slow minute later, we were through. But the x-ray machine needed to be calibrated first. 

We sprinted through Terminal 4 carrying a laptop and a pair of shoes in hand. Our gate, unsurprisingly, was at the end of the terminal. We walked straight onto the plane, taking a breath and a moment to gather ourselves. The flight was uneventful. 

Arrival in Detroit was a reunion in waiting. Paul's not been back to the US for four years--my parents eagerly awaited our arrival. We hugged, walked to the car and took a lateral flow test perched on the bags in the trunk of the car. Negative, negative and home we went. 

We went to bed, woke up to sunshine, the first sign of impending apocalypse. Bad shit never happens on a rainy day unless it's the movies.

Paul picked up his laptop for his final remote days of 2021. His colleagues continued to freak out about omicron, about the outdoor Christmas party with four people who have since tested positive. And so we took tests. 

And now we're here, separated by a set of basement stairs waiting for tomorrow's PCR to confirm Paul's second bout with Covid-19. Despite three jabs. Despite previous infection.

I was joking with colleagues earlier this week that there needs to be a word for surprised but simultaneously not surprised. And this is why we need that word. 

Excuse me while I panic.

International School Teacher Blues

There is something very special about the International School sector. It goes beyond a globally minded curriculum, which is a big highlight in of itself. But for me, the biggest perk is the people I work with. We're from every corner of the globe. My closest work friends, a group who call ourselves 1D, not because of the band but because of our office number, are from Argentina, England (with a Kurdish/Jordanian background), Romania and South Africa. 

This group, without me having to explain, get what it feels like to be Other. They get what it feels like to be new somewhere, to stick out (whether self-imposed or not), to have a yearning to be everywhere. This is a concept that most people don't quite understand and, sometimes, don't appreciate. But with my international school friends, it's something we lean into. It's something we celebrate. 

And it's also something we sometimes commiserate about. The last two weeks most of us have lived in a state of Covid-limbo. Roughly 70% of the staff at my school are nationals of other countries. We have families, houses, parents abroad. With travel restrictions recently largely reduced worldwide, we have clung onto hope that we might make it home to see these pieces of who we are. 

Omicron has had other ideas. 

Cases surge in the UK and the government gives the delightfully vague advice of 'we suggest you take caution but we're not going to suggest that you should cancel Christmas parties or stop going out. It must be an individual choice because we live in a 'free' society and you can make your own stupid f-ing choices about how to live your life. But you might want to wear a mask if you feel like it could be the right thing to do. Plus, are we even allowed to advise when we've just been caught having Christmas parties last year when the restrictions said NO parties whatsoever?' I'll spare you the lesson on modal verbs and loaded language. If you know me you can hear my tone.

Meanwhile, covid cases at school continued to rise. Parents started voting with their feet again, pulling their children out of school in order to ensure they could be covid-safe. Teachers didn't have this opportunity. 

My South African colleagues had their flights cancelled when the UK briefly closed its border to Southern Africa. Three weeks later, and three days ago, the border opened again. From going to cancelled to going again, my friends have ridden the adrenaline roller coaster that is travel in Covid times. 

Yesterday evening, I received a text message from one of my American colleagues--she's going home with her family, including three children. Her flight is today and it was unclear about whether she would be. Three weeks ago, the US introduced a 24-hour window to receive a negative covid test. This is complicated for so many reasons: surging omicron cases in schools (ours, her children's), expenses, logistics, cancellation fees, hopes, dreams, expectations to name a few. 

And now, after skipping out on after-work parties and events for the last two weeks, Paul and I wait in a similar limbo. We *might* fly tomorrow IF our Covid tests that we're taking in an hour come back negative. We haven't packed, Christmas shopped, told anyone at home beyond my family that we might be going. 

With that in mind my friends, international school and otherwise, continue to send messages of support. They get it. We're in it together in this strange pandemic but let's pretend like we're not in a pandemic teaching world. Despite the shit that continues to be 2021, this is one of the things that keeps me going. Little slices of gratitude keep me going. 

Dual

Friends, it's happened. Fifteen years, countless money spent, visa applications and forms completed, patient queueing (the ultimate British sport), and it's official. I am a dual citizen! 

It usually doesn't take this long. But I got lost somewhere in the quagmire of bureaucracy and a brief stint in China and I wouldn't change that experience for the world. Student visa to graduate visa to shortage area visa to indefinite leave to remain to citizenship, here we are. A British-American dual citizen. 

With Brexit, the passport comes with fewer perks than it used to hold. Freedom of movement across the EU is a thing of the past. The French disdain towards the British now is open and comically hostile. 

But I won't let that sully the pomp and ceremony that is a citizenship ceremony in a pandemic. Where you're allowed to bring one other masked adult to the local Town Hall to swear your allegiance to Queen and Country, via religious or secular oath. 

Where a man with a Portuguese sounding name and a South African sounding accent manages to be excited in running a ceremony he's done countless times over the year, proven by the fact that three of your close friends know THAT guy and his flag schtick.

Covid may have prevented the singing of the National Anthem but that didn't stop me from humming 'My Country Tis of Thee' in my head because America shamelessly stole that tune off of its mother country.

And when you stand up, read the oath, take a picture in front of the queen's picture, it's all a little magical for just a moment. When I moved to the UK fifteen years ago, I never considered where this journey would lead me. I was never looking at the big picture; there's no way I could have imagined how the years have panned out. Master's degree, marathons, man with kidney problems, an often-ridiculous career path, friendships that have stood the test of time.

Yet here we are. A girl, standing in front of some flags and a lady in a crown swearing to be true to another red, white and blue.

 

Now I can legally travel to Cuba. Totally worth the long game. 

The New Frontier

Today starts the last week of summer 2021, an 8-week teacher holiday that felt more than deserved after the madness of a second school year consumed by Covid. Radio silence has been provoked by two predominant emotions: overwhelm and exhaustion. To suggest that the 2019-2020 school year combined with the 2020-2021 school year felt like my first year of teaching all over again, might be putting it lightly. 

I'm not sure there are words to cover the lacuna that has been the last year of life in London. We made it through lockdown 2.0 (a joke) and lockdown 3.0 (a really bad dream). I went to work for a spate of time between September and December before being contact traced by a member of staff. We abandoned socialising, planning and even being hopeful about when we might do these things. Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went without any sense of occasion. I made no attempt to book flights home for the holidays, only the second time I've not been home since I moved abroad. 

In a story that's far too close to home to bear repeating, I acquired a very mild case of Covid in early January. So mild, I didn't get tested. But then Paul lost his sense of taste and smell and we became casa Covid for a window of time. But we got lucky; neither of us had it too badly. 

And then a bigger glimmer of hope in the form of science and a vaccine emerged. Paul was called in early Feb for his. Mine arrived much later, towards the end of March. We watched government ministers lie, profit and philander their way through the crisis unscathed. 

In a somewhat vain attempt to hope that normality might return in the summer, we booked flights back to the US to attend my little sister's wedding at the beginning of July. We waited and watched to see what travel restrictions and vaccination campaigns would mean for Paul being allowed in the country. US Travel restrictions, still as of today, mandate that anyone non-citizen or greencard holding who has spent the last 14-days in one of the following countries is barred entry: the UK; the EU (clearly, a homogenous 'place' according to the US); China; Iran; South Africa; Brazil. No matter that the US has the most number of Covid cases in the world despite its access to vaccines. No matter political dramas in a number of those countries. No matter. 

And so we begged, pleaded and applied for special status for Paul to travel. But we're not married so our relationship doesn't count. Apparently. 

And so, I cancelled Paul's flight, grappled with changes when my flight got cancelled, Covid tested two days before departure, smiled through graduation and prom and, against all odds, boarded a (first class!) flight bound for US soil early morning on the 26th of June. 

I'm not going to lie, upon wheels down in Atlanta, I burst into tears. When I eventually got to Detroit the next morning, I wept. 

And here we are, in the age of Covid travel.