A Trip I'll Never Forget

When I first decided to study abroad I figured I would struggle with adjusting to a new school, making friends, or even being homesick.  While all of these were factors in my transition to the University of Auckland, I never would have guessed my biggest concern abroad would be a global pandemic taking the world by storm.  

Finally realizing our study abroad experience was coming to an end, the next part of this crazy and unpredictable span of time was traveling home.  Unfortunately, with flights being cancelled left and right, our travel agent getting laid off, and the limited time frame we had to get home, our options for routes back were changing daily.  I went from flying home Sunday, to flying home Saturday, to finding out Thursday morning we were flying home Friday.  With these Friday plans finalized, a group of us were flying from Auckland to Houston and then separating for our respective flights home.

As you can see we were very pleased with this last minute change.

At first the environment of the airport was shocking, it was eerily empty and reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic world.  Trying to trek my way through in the bulky hiking boots I had no space to pack, I quickly realized how difficult it was to breathe in the masks.  Between balancing my three-wheeled suitcase next to me, dragging my overstuffed carry-on behind me, and supporting my bulging backpack on my back, I was consumed by sweat and tears that I could not wipe away without several tissues and loads of hand sanitizer.

A bunch of us sporting our bulky hiking boots

Now the first ten minutes of the process were not pretty to say the least.  Already overwhelmed by the entire situation having an overweight bag and being forced to check my carry-on did not help.  Long story short, I was lucky to have a very supportive group of people traveling with me and with the help of one of the other Loyola students I got all my stuff situated and we all moved on to security.  

Security is where it started to look up for me.  Before we left, our group was fortunate enough to have someone at the international office give each of us a bottle of hand sanitizer for our travels.  Of course, the bottle was over the liquid limit, but in these times, we took the risk. 

Everyone put their stuff through the scanner and about half of us were pulled.  Even though I was one of the people pulled, I had packed my hand sanitizer in my empty water bottle.  Little did I know, this strategic placement was the very reason I got through.  When the man at security started searching my bag he pulled out the water bottle and said he just needed to make sure it was empty.  As he flipped it upside down, I assured him I had packed a bunch of things in there and there was no water.  Starting to see the granola bars and pens slide out, he immediately flipped it back over and let me go.  

This was the highlight of my trip.

Not everyone was as lucky as I was in this situation, but between the few of us that got through, we had plenty of hand sanitizer to go around.  

With a few bloggers in the group, we of course stopped for some pictures... 

From here forward, we just did whatever we needed to do to get home safely.  From anti-bacterial wipes to hand sanitizer, we were as careful and clean as we could possibly be throughout our travels.  Anytime someone took out their hand sanitizer, everyone took some and any time we sat down, we wiped down where we were sitting.  There was only so much we could do by the point we were traveling home, but we stayed positive and hoped for the best.

Once, we reached Houston, we lost some of the group to other flights, but those flying into Philadelphia continued on together.  Philadelphia was not necessarily the closest airport I could fly into to get home, but with my Newark flight cancelled last minute, it was the best we could do.  Despite some unusual ticket issues, we all managed to get on the flight.  My parents met me in Philadelphia with Lysol sprays and hand sanitizer of their own and once all my stuff was sprayed down and loaded into the car, we sped off.  About two hours later, the third and final leg of my journey was complete and I was home, maybe three months earlier than I expected, but after everything, all that mattered was I finally made it home.

Home sweet home...kind of