International students find ways to entertain themselves amidst COVID-19 outbreak

When St. Thomas University announced it would end in-person classes, international student Emilia Gutiérrez called her mom and cried.

“It was a very emotional moment because I wasn’t expecting it … My immediate reaction was panic … I didn’t know what to do,” she said.

Gutiérrez is from Ecuador but her parents live in Spain because of her father’s job. She was in the process of getting her visa renewed to spend the summer with her parents.

With offices closed due to COVID-19, her visa process has been delayed.

“Now I have to look for a job and find things to do in the summer, which is really unexpected. But I know that at least I’m safe at home,” she said.

At the moment, Gutiérrez is cooking, baking and doing exercise to pass her time.

“I really enjoy cooking, it kind of gives me something to look forward to,” she said.

Gutiérrez lives with four other international students. Alexa Navas, who is from Nicaragua, said her parents bought her a ticket home two hours after STU announced it would end in-person classes.

She had a layover in El Salvador, but the country announced travel restrictions. Her parents tried to buy her a new route that would go through Panama, but it also had travel restrictions.

“It became impossible to fly, so we decided that it would be best to just stay here,” she said.

Navas said it was difficult to focus on homework. She decided, for her mental health, she wasn’t going to force her body to work but do it whenever she felt productive.

“I would love to sound like a super organized and put together person and say ‘oh yes, I woke up early and made breakfast and then did my homework.’ But I didn’t, I decided that it was best for my mental health to wake up at whatever time my body felt like I had enough rest,” she said.

Navas said that during the school year she doesn’t have the energy to read for pleasure. But now that she has more time, she has been picking up on old habits like reading personal development books.

“It feels good, reconnecting with things that I used to do that made me feel peaceful and made me feel relaxed,” she said.

She has also baked cookies and brownies and shared them with her roommates.

Navas said people live such busy lives daily that they don’t put in the time to take care of themselves.

“I think, in a very metaphorical way, the world needed to come to a halt so that everyone realized that they needed to take time for themselves and for being with the people they love and just do stuff that we normally ‘don’t have enough time for,’” she said.

Hanna Bustos, who also lives with Navas and Gutiérrez, has also been affected by travel restrictions. She’s part of the club Global Brigades at STU with Gutiérrez. They had plans to go on a humanitarian brigade to Honduras at the end of April but it was cancelled because of COVID-19.

Bustos spends her time watching videos in TikTok, a new social media application, playing her guitar or drawing.

She said while she was doing assignments, the idea of not being productive affected her mental health. Now that she’s finished the school year, she does whatever she feels that she needs to do.

“Sometimes I just don’t want to do anything and I stay in bed watching movies and I feel that’s okay because what else can we do in these times?” she said.

Bustos said the virus affects everyone in a different way. Even if she wasn’t going to go home, she wishes she could be with her family. Bustos said she knows many international students who depend financially on their parents and are affected because their parents aren’t working or cannot leave their houses to send them money.

She said that now that people have to stay home they are doing things that are meaningful to them, like reconnecting with family and loved ones.

“Everyone is always in a rush. The world is always going on and on. With this, everyone just took a big break.”