Where do I even begin with this one? Haha it's been a TRIP. One crazy wild trip. Here's our story about how we left Grenada (by the skin of our teeth) and came back to America only to be woken up to an earthquake and go into quarantine (yes, things progressed quickly, right?!):
It was the second week in March, and Kevin's school had sent out two emails already about attendance being only mandatory for those students who were "not feeling sick", and then the next day (Tuesday) they sent out another email stating that attendance was not mandatory for anyone. All in an attempt to keep everyone healthy. Rumors about the coronavirus were being talked about, but it didn't feel like anything scary or close. It was in China, right? Not down on our little forgotten island.
Then around 9pm on Wednesday night, March 11, our group chats start blowing up. Something about an email from SGU...asking us to leave...virus...sending planes. A few minutes later (which felt like years) Kevin finally got the email and opened it to find out this:
It went on to say that if we chose to leave the island and wished to use one of their chartered planes, we were to fill out a form for our family by 5pm the next day(Thursday). Like, whaaaa? So we had less than 24 hours to decide if we were going to just pick up and leave? Our phones were going off like crazy from texts, friends were calling to see what we were doing, and my mind was racing. At first our reaction was: Oh, it's fine. We will just stay. We had hit a good groove! I was feeling so much peace/happiness about everything! There's no need to get worked up about this. We planned to not even go home for the break in a few weeks (after term 2, before term 3 starts), and just stick it out for another year anyways. No biggie. But the more we thought about it, the more we considered the long lasting risks. As much as we wanted to stay, we did NOT want to be stuck on the island if Grenada decided to shut the airports down. We did NOT want to get sick and be stuck in one of the horrible (it's sooooo sad but true) hospitals on the island. And to be honest, at this point we weren't even that concerned about the virus itself getting us. What we were worried about was the virus getting to the island, the airports shutting down and the "what if" one of our kids happened to fall and crack their heads open...and there's no help whatsoever. Then there's the worry about the looters and the danger of the locals in general. No police or military force for any protection. That's nerve-wracking (we actually had a friend experience this on a neighboring island, when they had to be evacuated because of a hurricane!eee!).
We ultimately decided to leave and fill out the form. Mind you this was all within like, an hour or two. It was a highly stressful moment, and what we didn't realize is that this high anxiety and stress would continue throughout the rest of the week and into the weekend. It just continued to escalate. That was the worst part. The not knowing. The waiting to find out if we were on a flight. Checking our phones every second (Kevin says to make sure I let you all know that this was me and not him-haha! okay, yeah me), reading any update available via Facebook (that's what everyone uses down there to communicate. That or Whatsapp).
So we fill out the form, that only has room for the student and two others (ack! we are a family of 5!), and put Ryder and Tinley's info in the notes section, hoping they see it and we don't get split up. Not that we would ever let that happen, BUT in the moment it was not very calming to see...aka it just added to our stress and nerves. So they gave us two options: JFK or Miami. We chose to fly into JFK, because we had flown through there before and were familiar with it, and mainly because we knew it had direct flights back to SLC. It was more expensive, but we really just wanted to do one direct flight vs a broken up/multiple flights with Ryder. Haha sidenote: the whole reason we had decided to stay on the island for another year, instead of coming home for the break, was because we DID NOT want to fly with Ryder. Lucky us we got to fly with him anyways. hahaha.
About this time, as we finished filling out the form, we heard Trump was speaking. Looked up his address and saw that he had decided to close America's borders to Europe, and that all Americans over there, were going to need to get back home asap. Yikes. JFK was going to be a nightmare. We now wanted to avoid that airport at all cost, so Kevin sent an email to the school letting them know we'd like to switch and be placed on a Miami flight.
Now came the waiting game. Remember this all happened/began Wednesday night. We facetimed our parents to fill them in, and then tried to go to bed...baha! That was a joke. I think we slept a whopping 3 hours that night. Woke up and just stared at each other and kept saying: "What is going on right now? Are we really leaving...just like that?!" Our friends on the island and others in the branch were also feeling the same way and we were all basically up around 5:30 texting each other about packing plans and whatnot. So fun.
The next day, Thursday, came and went. No word from SGU. No word on flights or a flight manifest was put out. I did laundry and tried to pack, but it was hard and didn't feel real...just a LOT of stress going on. Kevin (and none of the guys) could focus and study. Friday morning around 4:50 the first flight manifests for Friday and Saturday started coming in. We weren't on any of them, and I wanted to cry. I did that night. Friday was rough, Kevin drove some friends to the airport, and we finished up with the packing. We didn't even pack everything up completely, because at this point the school had said that they would reassess the situation in 4 weeks. We all kind of just assumed we'd be back then, or for our next term (that starts June 29). So we packed some clothes, all our electronic devices: ipads, my desktop, kevin's laptop, and our Alexa. We had 3 large checked bags, a stroller, carseat, and everyone had a carry-on.
Friday night we found out that some of the later flights out had been cancelled and rescheduled for the next morning. Frustrating for those families that had packed up their place and gotten rid of their food expecting to be gone and not sleeping there that night! I think it was suuuper late Friday night (around midnight) that Kevin finally received an email telling us we were on a flight out for Sunday at 8pm. Super discouraging as it was still yet another day away AND the very last flight of the day.
On Saturday, the Morgan's(cute family from Burley) had invited everyone to their place for a pool/going away party. Luckily that helped boost our moods and take our minds off of some of the stress from the whole situation. We were feeling okay and just relieved to have a "plan" and know more of when we were leaving. However, late that night we found out that only TWO of the chartered flights had left Grenada and that the rest had been cancelled. Our friends-that were supposed to leave at 9pm Friday night, and had gotten bumped to 10am Saturday-ended up not leaving until 4 (and they sat there with two toddlers and my girlfriend is like 9 months PREGNANT. #saint). So insane. So much disorganization and flights over-scheduled. Up until this point, students had been checking in directly at the airport, but due to a bunch of reasons (students not showing up for their flights/being ready and packed, packing too many bags that were overweight-we were only supposed to have 1 checked bag per person), the whole process was slowed down and just NOT efficient. It was a nightmare and a madhouse. Long insane lines everywhere, students who missed their original flight trying to jump on other flights, people cutting in line like crazy...and oh, this is all at a tiny airport. About the size of IF. And all of these lines are outside in the heat/humidity AND it happened to rain the last half of the day.
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| The coolest rainbow showed up Saturday evening. Trying to remind us that everything would be okay. |
As soon as we heard that the rest of the Saturday flights had been cancelled, the worry about "what are they going to do with everyone scheduled to fly tomorrow/Sunday" went off like crazy. And guess what happened? Yep, they cancelled ALL the Sunday flights-OUR FLIGHT-and rescheduled people. I was a wreck and SO ANGRY. I was livid that they (the school/SGU) weren't more organized and that they didn't get the families out first. So many of us had been sitting ready to go since Friday, and here we were hearing that students were missing their flights because they weren't packed! I wanted to kill. We also had to cancel our connecting flight that we had just purchased the night before. Thankfully the airlines were understanding, and that didn't turn into a big nightmare.
Late Saturday night we found out some new guidelines for checking in: no one was to go to the airport (or they'd just be sent away). Only those who were on the flight manifest were to check in ON CAMPUS at open Modica. Then they'd bus us to the airport. Sunday was....yet another day of unknown.
At this point we were just laying around with packed bags, wishing we were gone and off this forsaken island. hahaha. But honestly. When you have made the decision to leave, you just wanna get it over with and leave! Sitting around, trying to eat up any last crumb in sight, keep cleaning up any messes...not the funnest. Late Sunday night Kevin finally got another email letting us know that we were on the first flight out to Newark (they had re-routed all JFK planes to go here) at 11am. Yay.
Because of the chaos that the entire weekend had been, we decided to get to the school to check in at 7am. Check in was at 8. We were up at 6 Monday morning. We were not going to miss our dang flight and we were going to be getting off the island Monday. No matter what. Got checked in, loaded our luggage onto the trailer, got on the bus, pulled out to head to the airport....and circled back around campus to come to a stop right where we had just left. OH MY GOSH. It was a joke. A lady/helper poked her head in and told us "We don't know why we were told to bring you back, but we need you all to get off the bus and head upstairs to wait until further notice. Someone is on their way from the airport now to update us." haha. It was too good to be true. So our luggage was thrown off the trailer across the street in a big heap, and we went upstairs to wait.
A man came walking into the room maybe 10 minutes later with a megaphone. He told us that they were cancelling the 11am Newark flight, because they were bringing in a larger plane to take us out at 4pm. I am writing this and just laughing at how incredibly stupid it all was. Here we are with all our kids just expected to sit and wait in a random room for 7 hours (it was only 9am at this time). Well, ipads were busted out obviously, and that kept the older kids happy. The next flight that was to leave was to Miami at 1. We hung out for about 3 hours until noon talking and trying to listen for any more updates or information. And it was around this time that we heard they were going to let the standby line get on the Miami flight.
Kevin and another friend went down to talk to some of the workers about getting all of our families (there were 5 of us) on that Miami flight. Thankfully Kevin happened to talk to the right person and he texted "Get everyone down here now and fast". From there it was honestly a mad dash to give them all our passport information (we had to be switched from the Newark manifest to the Miami one), and Kevin went sprinting across the road to un-bury and find our luggage in the pile that had originally been dumped from that morning. We were bussed to the airport, flew through check in there, and then sprinted across the tarmac in pouring rain! We had been told that if the plane wasn't loaded by 1 then it wouldn't be allowed to leave (regular flights get priority for the runway over chartered flights-which also played a roll in planes and flights being cancelled the previous days).
Whew! It was a WILD day but we were so dang happy to enter that plane and takeoff. Kevin was the very last person in the plane before they closed it up.
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| Our plane also happened to be the very last plane out here. So we ran a good distance and got soaked! But we were laughing because AMERICA WE'RE COMIN' FOR YA! |
In all of the last minute rush, we forgot Ryder's carseat! I was ticked for a second, but realized a carseat was the least of my worries. Feeling suuuuper thankful that we made it on a plane and were going to be setting foot on American soil again. We couldn't wait! Also got to ride first class which was fun.
Ryder was...exactly how we expected him to be. Ha. He was a handful and hard. Mostly just on takeoff and landing because he had to be buckled, and he refused to drink anything or eat anything then so his ears were hurting him. He did fall asleep on me for all three flights though (parts of them-not the entire flights), so that was a huge plus.
We landed in Miami around 6pm (wheels up and actually flying around 2:30). We had to go through customs and because Ryder was screaming like a maniac we were put to the front of the line. Another huge blessing. We tried to catch another flight to Denver that night, but couldn't (only 2 available seats). So we just headed to the hotel that the school had paid for us to stay in. That ended up being probably the best for everyone, even though Kevin and I really just wanted to keep going until we were in Utah.
This night (Monday), Kevin and a friend walked a mile to get us McDonalds. Worth it. French fries and burgers never tasted so good. Mind you, this was also at 11pm and we had eaten only crackers and a cup of water from the plane. You may think that's so weird, but you GUYS. Grenadian food is not that good. We are so lucky to have so much yummy options and flavor here in the United States of America!!
Up and ready to fly from Miami to Atlanta at 5am.
Bronx's face is how we really all felt at 5am.
From Atlanta we flew to SLC. My mom picked us up around 12:30 there, and we went back to their house in Lehi to stay the night. We didn't really have any real plan at this point, except to make it back up to Rexburg, where we'd stay in Kevin's parent's basement. We did want to see and hang out with my family and Kevin's while we were in Utah. We thought that maybe we'd stay a week or so.
Kevin's reaction upon entering my parent's house. CARPET! Oh boy. Everything in Grenada is tile. And if you know Kevin, he totally will sleep on the floor in front of a heater any day of the week. He didn't get that in Grenada. baha. After getting caught up and talking about the social distancing, COVID-19, and schools getting shut down, we went to bed...only to get woken up to an earthquake! Talk about a wild 48 hours. Phones blowing up again, another aftershock. Part of 1-80 closed, SLC airport closed....Kevin and I decided to sadly pack up and leave the following day to get to Rexburg.
Kevin is continuing to do his schooling online. It's all very weird and seems odd, but everything right now kind of feels that way. We are quarantining ourselves away for the next two weeks, and are trying to stay positive and sane.
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