Traveling Abroad During COVID-19 #HogsAbroad in Cyprus

This summer I went to Cyprus to study in the pre-medical program at the University of Nicosia. I took a special topics and clinical skills anatomy course and a public health course. We also took group trips every weekend to different places on the island. I learned so much and had the most amazing time while I was there, however trying to get there, was a big of a struggle for me.

This was my first time traveling to Europe alone and I was very nervous to fly by myself. I had spent several weeks preparing and packing for my trip, and thought I had everything organized and all good to go. On the day of my flight, I had my mom take me to the airport three hours early to be safe. Once I got to the airport so many problems started happening. My mom came in with me and the line to check in at the American Airlines desk was super long, so we tried to check me in on the kiosk machines instead. Those did not work though because I was flying out of the country. We got in the line and tried to download the Veri-fly app so we could switch to a much shorter line but that would not work either. It took well over an hour for us to get to the front, but I was still doing okay on time since I had come so early to the airport. My bag ended up being exactly fifty pounds and I thought everything else was going to go smoothly. The lady at the desk started to get me checked in but then said there might be a problem. She started calling all these people and trying to look up stuff since all the guidelines and regulations were constantly changing. She stopped to tell me my COVID-19 test would not work because it had the result handwritten. She kept calling more people for about another hour before she finally got off and told me that she was pretty sure I could not go to Germany, where my connecting flight was, because I would have to stay there because of how I bought my tickets and did not know if my test would be accepted there. I had gotten a ticket through American Airlines to go to Germany, then a flight on Lufthansa, a German airline, to go from there to Cyprus. When I had got my ticket several months before I left, there were not any flights on American that would connect me from Germany to Cyprus, but since they had added one, she told me I had to be on that flight and the tickets had to be bought together. She said my only option was to buy a completely new ticket if I wanted to get there. I almost started crying because I thought I was not going to be able to go at all and there was maybe ten minutes before my flight left. Luckily since I was with my mom, she was nice enough to buy another ticket right then and worry about figuring everything out later. I ran to security and was able to cut the line, then run to my gate. I was the last person to board, but I made it on the plane.

Thankfully, the travel to get there was pretty much the only trouble I had during my trip. When I got to Germany, there were no problems with my COVID test, I only had to show my vaccine card. The American flight from there to Cyprus ended up being the same Lufthansa flight I originally had a ticket on. While I was away, my mom had to repeatedly call American Airlines for several days, but she was able to get refunded points for my original ticket. Traveling during COVID-19 was a lot different and way more difficult to navigate, but it was totally worth it. Studying abroad allowed me to experience an amazing new culture and meet so many new people. I also learned to speak a little bit of Greek! Cyprus was incredibly beautiful, and I made so many amazing memories that I will always treasure.

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Hospitality management Major Chase Webb spent the Summer 2021 term in Nicosia, Cyprus with the University of Nicosia with support from the Office of Study Abroad Scholarship.

You can start planning your adventure abroad today! Dive in to our Explore page at https://studyabroad.uark.edu/explore/index.php, and start your program search at http://studyabroad.uark.edu/search/