{"id":28671,"date":"2020-04-28T11:00:56","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T16:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=28671"},"modified":"2020-04-28T10:23:30","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T15:23:30","slug":"getting-home-in-a-pandemic-an-apsu-exchange-students-adventure-out-of-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2020\/04\/28\/getting-home-in-a-pandemic-an-apsu-exchange-students-adventure-out-of-france\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting home in a pandemic \u2013 An APSU exchange student\u2019s adventure out of France"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Late that night, while Austin Peay State University (APSU) freshman Madison Morgan finished her laundry, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the European Union was closing its borders.<\/p>\n

Beginning the next day at noon, no one would be able to fly out of France\u2019s Charles De Gaulle Airport. Morgan watched Macron on her smartphone.<\/p>\n

\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay State University freshman Madison Morgan in Paris in the Place de la R\u00e9publique. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Her flight back to the United States was scheduled for Thursday \u2013 two days after this new travel ban.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to leave now!\u201d Angel Arrington, another APSU student said. Both women were spending the spring semester as exchange students at France\u2019s Universit\u00e9 d’Orl\u00e9ans. \u201cWe have to get to Paris tonight!\u201d<\/p>\n

It was 10 p.m, Monday, March 16th, 2020. The trip from Orl\u00e9ans to Paris would take about an hour and a half by train, but there was still so much to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to close my French bank account, we had to go talk to housing and get our rooms in our dorm closed,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cWe had planned to leave on Thursday. Now I was packing, freaking, calling my parents. I was a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two APSU students threw clothes into Morgan\u2019s suitcase and then rushed out into the street.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was go, go, go,\u201d she said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have time to close out our dorms. We left our keys and went. We stood outside our building, trying to get an Uber or BlaBlaCar (French ride-share app). It was a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, Arrington talked to a French classmate who\u2019d studied abroad at Austin Peay. She hooked them up with a BlaBlaCar, which took them to the outskirts of Paris.  Their flight to the U.S. was scheduled to leave at 10 a.m. the next morning, just two hours before the borders closed.<\/p>\n

An American in Orl\u00e9ans<\/h3>\n
\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay State University freshman Madison Morgan in in Orl\u00e9ans. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

Last year, Morgan was a senior high school student living in Dickson, Tennessee, trying to figure out where she wanted to attend college. Then one afternoon, APSU French professors Drs. Karen Sorenson and Christophe Konkobo visited her school.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter I met them, I knew I had to go to Austin Peay,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Part of her plan was to someday study in France, but a few weeks into her first semester, she received an email from APSU\u2019s Learning Opportunities Center, letting her know she\u2019d received a Global Learning Opportunities Scholarship.<\/p>\n

[320left]\u201cThat was a great thing because they gave me money to study abroad,\u201d she said. \u201cI thought, \u2018I\u2019m going to France\u2019 \u2013 this is happening. My dad is a detective, so he has this protectiveness over me, but my parents didn\u2019t want to talk to me about their worries because they knew it was my dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, in January, only one semester into her college career, Morgan arrived at De Gaulle Airport. The terminal was crowded with international passengers. That afternoon, she made her way south to Orl\u00e9ans, and in the days that followed, after the fogginess of jetlag, paperwork and a new culture lifted, Morgan fell in love with the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt at home there,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a big city, but it\u2019s large enough to have this wonderful downtown area. You don\u2019t have to do anything. It\u2019s just beautiful to look at.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new virus<\/h3>\n

Over the next few weeks, Morgan felt more at home in this foreign city, making friends with her fellow students and growing in her French language abilities. She also kept coming across stories about a mysterious illness in China.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember seeing on social media that there was a new virus, but I didn\u2019t pay much attention to it,\u201d she said. \u201cBut then the other Americans from other universities started talking about it. It kept growing and growing, and then everyone was talking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan downloaded a French news app and the CNN app to keep herself informed about this new coronavirus. In France, residents were warned to stay away from gatherings of 50,000 people or more, but every week that number grew lower and lower. Morgan kept in regular contact with Sorenson, her APSU French professor, who told her Austin Peay was restricting international travel and moving all classes fully online. Then early one morning, she received a call from Dr. Marissa Chandler, APSU director of Study Abroad and International Exchange.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a weird way I knew she was going to call me,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cThat night when I went to bed, I saw that President Trump was going to make an announcement, and I thought, \u2018I\u2019m going to go home.\u2019 Dr. Chandler called me at 2 a.m. I was half asleep and she said, \u2018you\u2019re coming home.\u2019 And I lost it. France had always been my dream. To go home early just broke my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Weekend in Paris<\/h3>\n

That Friday, after being on hold for more than two hours, Arrington and Morgan booked flights back to the U.S. They were set to leave the next Thursday, giving them time for one last visit to Paris. They arrived by train that Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ended up in a restaurant, and the waiter came by and said \u2018we\u2019re closing at midnight and we won\u2019t be open tomorrow or for a while,\u2019\u201d Morgan said. \u201cWe woke up the next day and everything was closed. It was eerie. We ate at the boulangeries, French bakeries, because they were open. We went to a portion of the Louvre that has a shopping center \u2013 it was my third time there. Every other time it was wall-to-wall people, lines everywhere. Now, we were in this shopping center by ourselves, with two security guards.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[470center]<\/p>\n

Getting back home<\/h3>\n

That Monday night, while Morgan and Arrington rushed to Paris, Chandler booked the APSU students a flight home and found them a hotel. They arrived in their room, exhausted, at 1 a.m., slept for an hour, and then headed to De Gaulle Airport. The terminal wasn\u2019t as crowded as when they first arrived back in January.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just Americans trying to get home,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cIt was smooth sailing.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the passengers on the plane were given forms to fill out, explaining where they\u2019d been and how they felt. When the plane landed in the U.S., they were only able to disembark 10 people at a time.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou got off the plane, and the CDC was there waiting, wearing masks,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cThey looked at the paper and at you and just said, \u2018you\u2019re good to go.\u2019 They did give us a paper on what to do if we developed symptoms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan never did develop symptoms, but she did self-quarantine in her bedroom at home for 14 days. She\u2019s now living with her parents in Dickson, where Morgan is finishing her semester at the Universit\u00e9 d’Orl\u00e9ans with early morning \u2013 \u201cvery early,\u201d she said \u2013 zoom lectures.<\/p>\n

Even with the stress of those last few days, she hopes to return to France soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to come home, but I have all these feelings that I lost this opportunity,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so I emailed Dr. Sorenson and asked if I could go back to Orl\u00e9ans. I want to go back. I felt at home there. It\u2019s like a part of me is missing. I was only there for two and a half months, but I loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – Late that night, while Austin Peay State University (APSU) freshman Madison Morgan finished her laundry, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the European Union was closing its borders. Beginning the next day at noon, no one would be able to fly out of France\u2019s Charles De Gaulle Airport. Morgan watched Macron on her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[34685,23,30954,262,3672,25110,512,825,34581,34634,4973,28511,9797,5761,34684,18324,34642,13432,2225,8752],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-7sr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28671"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28672,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28671\/revisions\/28672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}