At 6 a.m. the morning of my flight home, I got in the taxi to the airport, unsure of what to expect once I got there. I flew out of Heathrow Airport, and it didn’t really seem much different. No one was taking temperatures or wearing masks, things seemed normal. I grabbed breakfast at one of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, something I wanted to do while in London, and I waited for my plane to board. The plane ride home was quick, I slept most of the way. Once we were about an hour from Dulles, reality began to set in. We were handed COVID-19 forms that we had to fill out and hand to an interviewer once we got off of the plane. They had us disembark in two groups, one group of people who had not been to mainland Europe in the past 14 days, and one group who had been. I was in the second group due to my previous weekend trip to Denmark. We finally got to get off of the plane and we road a bus to the gate where we stood in line waiting to go through a health screening. The process was pretty easy, they read your form and if you had one of the symptoms you were handed a mask and had your temperature taken. If you were not running a fever, you were able to head to customs and then head home. The line for customs wasn’t too long, I’d say I waited about an hour. After I was done with customs I grabbed my bags and headed outside to meet my mom, who greeted me with a six feet apart wave. Once I got home from London, I followed the CDC protocol and quarantined myself in my room for two weeks in case I had been exposed. These two weeks felt lonely, as I was not only isolated from my family, but I had just left all of my friends I had made in London without enough time to truly say goodbye. I had a few assignments that were due within these two weeks so I had plenty of time to finish them. I mostly spent my quarantine time thinking about my time in London and how it had affected me. I also watched some movies and played my Nintendo Switch, which seems to be a hot commodity nowadays! My quarantine ended at the beginning of April, so after that I was able to get out of the house and spend some time in nature. I live in Virginia close to the Blue Ridge Mountains, so many of my days are spent driving the Blue Ridge Parkway and pulling off at different areas to hike and explore. I have grown to love hiking as it is a very easy way to practice social distancing but still be outside. One day, I was driving on the Parkway and it randomly started snowing! I love snow so it was nice to be able to see some even though winter is over. I have also used this time to go through all of my things as well as clean and organize my room. My sister and I enjoy going to local ice cream shops which is something we haven’t done since last summer. I don’t get to spend much time with my sister since I have been in college, so I am thankful for these moments. Funny enough, my ‘spring break’ was actually the first two weeks of April, so I haven’t had any classes since my quarantine ended. My next blog post will discuss my transition to online learning and what that looks like since I was abroad. I have added a few pictures from my various trips to the Blue Ridge Mountains!
Courtney’s Semester in London 