Alone and confused: The students thousands of miles from home during global Covid pandemic

Cardiff University’s international students have shared their experiences of studying in the capital under lockdown. Camilla Rydzek reports

THE coronavirus pandemic has not been easy for anybody. From lockdowns that seemed to never end to the numerous pressures on everyday life, it’s been a tough time.

And for international students, life under lockdown has brought its own challenges.

Paying out hundreds of pounds for tests to visit home, being told to quarantine for weeks on end in shared housing, and even confusion over how to buy food during lockdown – these have been some of the difficulties faced by students.

“When I started in my role in July last year, I got so many emails asking what are we going to do, what is happening,” said Cardiff’s Student Union officer for international students Megha Ray.

Since then, over Christmas and again at Easter, Megha’s inbox has been full of students asking for guidance on everything from how to selfisolate to where to get Covid tests and how to buy food during lockdown.

To support their international students, Welsh universities, including Cardiff, have introduced a variety of financial and pastoral policies.

Yet “the students are really struggling”, said Megha.

Cardiff University has the largest number of international students at any university in Wales, making up 25% of the entire student population.

Now, three of these undergraduates, each with their individual struggles, have shared how they are coping with the hurdles the global pandemic has put in their way, from travel restrictions and life in quarantine to remote learning.

Ilia Kalliontzi is a second-year psychology student at Cardiff and travelled to see her family in Greece for Easter.

While still against the rules to travel for holidays, it is a reasonable excuse for an international student to go home during a term break to see their family.

Travelling in non-Covid times was already stressful for Ilia, who explains half-jokingly that she’s the kind of person who is at the airport two or three hours early and always worries about documentation and passports.

Still, she was caught off-guard. For her flight to Greece she knew she needed a passenger locator form, but didn’t realise it was essential to complete this at least 24 hours in advance. This small oversight almost cost her the flight.

“There’s so many documents to remember and so many things to do before you get to the airport. It’s so easy to just forget something or do something wrong – it’s really stressful,” Ilia said.

On her return to the UK, she had to show five different documents.

“They asked for my passenger locator form, the booking information for the [travel testing kit], the negative test result to travel back, the passenger locator form from Greece, they even asked me about the EU settlement scheme,” she explained.

With travelling also comes the need for a total of 20 days of quarantine, as well as the financial strain of paying for Covid tests in two different countries, with a final bill of about £323. In the UK she paid £120 for a single PCR and about £160 for the two PCR tests included in the travel testing kit.

In Greece, she paid around €50 (or £43) for a PCR test, revealing a clear price discrepancy for testing between the two countries.

Of the six universities in Wales with more than 1,000 international students, Cardiff University is the only one that has published policies that say it is reimbursing the travel testing kit cost.

Easter Chan, 20, is a second-year pharmacy undergraduate at Cardiff University. As her course is defined as essential, she had little choice but to return to Cardiff after spending Christmas with her family in Hong Kong, a situation she felt very unhappy about.

“In a sense that was kind of harsh because there was obviously the new variant around at that time, and my family was quite worried about me honestly,” Easter said.

“It’s funny because the amount of physical hours I have to come back for, they are I think half of the time less than the hours I have to travel back. Because my flight is 12 hours and I only came back for four in-person sessions.”

She adds that she is also supposed to complete a one-week placement, but that might rescheduled.

“I would say seeing my family is really a luxury,” said Easter, adding that she’s grateful her family paid for her to stay in one of the designated quarantine hotels she is required to stay in.

Easter spent 10 days in this accommodation, which at least was close to her family’s house, where her movements are monitored via her phone’s GPS and someone called regularly to check that she was at home.

“This might sound really bizarre, especially to Western countries, but Hong Kong went through Sars and we sort of had experience with it and

‘Hong Kong went through Sars and we sort of had experience with it and we knew what to do...’ EASTER CHAN