The past two years have been “a bit of a whirlwind” for Moran native Molly McEwan.
She experienced the COVID-19 pandemic earlier than her friends and family in Allen County, as she was living and working in China when the virus first emerged.
She and her then-fiance, Tyson Carpenter, both went into quarantine and started teaching remotely long before the rest of the world were forced to do the same. Molly shared her experiences with the Register several times during the pandemic.
Though large swaths of China are once again in lockdown as it’s battling its biggest outbreak since the early days of the pandemic, McEwan said life for her has mostly returned to normal.
Her big news: She and Tyson were married last summer — in the United States.
“We spent about five weeks before the ceremony traveling around Kansas and seeing friends and family who we greatly missed since our last visit. It was a dream summer,” she said via email.
Still, coming back to the U.S. wasn’t easy.
“It was a risky decision to leave and try to come back, but we had a lot of help from friends in the USA and China to get all the paperwork sorted for our return to our lives and jobs over here,” Molly said.
“When we returned to China, we had a mandatory quarantine in Guangzhou before we resumed teaching at our school.”
COVID restrictions have eased throughout the world, but some places still have travel restrictions. At the time of Molly’s recap, China did not have travel restrictions, although some cities have mandatory testing on arrival. Some jobs ask you don’t travel too far because of exposure to large groups, she said.
Last week, China reported its largest outbreak in two years. The country’s zero-tolerance policy prompted lockdowns in major manufacturing hubs and ports such as Shanghai, Shenzhen and Dongguan.
They live in the village of Cixi, near the larger city of Ningbo. They are both teachers and are still working at the same school with the same students from the previous school year.
“Our school year has not really changed, everything is pretty close to the way it had been before,” Molly said.
They plan to stay in China for a while before coming back to the U.S. for good
“Overall, it can be frustrating how things have changed, and even more frustrating to have no entity to direct the feelings toward,” she said.
“But we have learned to accept our circumstances, whatever they may be, and have gained a great deal of patience in the process.”
