At this stage India had only had a couple of Covid-19 cases, and none in our state that we were aware of. Life was pretty normal. The kids were continuing on at school as usual. David had been approached to potentially take a new role in Korea, which would see us moving around June. At that point Korea was one of the few countries where there were lockdowns and escalating covid cases.
Ethan competed for his school in an inter-school athletics event. The event was held at AISC, so the kids didn't need to travel. The other schools came from other cities in India, Jordan, Oman, Sri Lanka etc. Erica was also on the team as an alternate.
Competing in the high jump.
Hanging out with team-mates before an event.
The whole team! Erica and Ethan are both in there.
David and I took Clara on a little date in Neelankarai. Here she is with her big milkshake.
Erica with her best friends from AISC. All but one of those girls have now moved. One went to the USA, one to Luxembourg and of course us to Korea. Erica is still in contact with all of the girls.
A beautiful bunch of flowers gifted by a friend. Erica in the background.
Eating out with the girls at Chamiers.
Near the cafe is a shop that sells animals made from lovely fabrics. Clara saved up to buy one and bought herself a cat.
A picture of Clara at school. Lucky we took this picture because it turned out to be one of the last times she went to that school.
David had accepted the new job in Korea, and had flown to Seoul. He sent us this picture from the Singapore airport on his way over. At this point he was still doing his Indian job, along with the new Korean job. He was going to be commuting between the two countries for a while. We were going to fly to meet him in Korea during Spring Break (March) when we would look at schools and areas to live in.
We abandoned the idea of going to Korea in March as Covid-19 started to spread further in more countries. This was lucky because it became very difficult to travel between countries. At this point we knew many expat friends from China who had gone away during Chinese New Year and had been unable to return home. I feel fortunate that we didn't end up in that situation.
However, David was in Korea when India starting banning flights from entering. At that point India declared that all visas were now invalid. Not just tourist visas, all visas including those of people who lived and worked in India. So this now prevented David from being able to return to India.
The immigration company used by David's company were able to work out a way for him to get a new temporary visa to re-enter India on compassionate grounds. He had to get a covid test and appeal at the Indian consulate in Seoul. David watched other applicants get rejected, for example a person who had been studying in India and would fail their subjects if they could not return. Fortunately being separated from your wife and children was deemed a valid reason to be able to return and David flew back as soon as he could.
He arrived in India on the day after Erica's birthday and we all went into quarantine inside our home, as was advised by both the government and the school. During that quarantine, India locked-down entirely (with only 4 hours notice from the government). We were lucky to get David back with us before this occurred. After that the only flights going out of the country were evacuation flights organised by country consulates.
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