Transcript below
Daniel: When the pandemic first started, I was honestly really scared because, you know, the pandemic started in China, and Taiwan, being very close geographically to China, I was very scared, thinking, okay, maybe Taiwan's going to be one of the worst hit countries.
Sophia: Covid-19. From Taiwan, it really feels like we're living in a bubble.
Alejandro: Covid-19 in Taiwan has not really affected my life in a big way.
David: What impact? No, I'm kidding.
Araceli: We've been very fortunate that Taiwan has a good control over this whole situation of COVID and so we've been very responsible as a country to take the precautionaries that we need.
Jennifer: I feel like the Taiwanese government and the Taiwanese people have been really responsible and taken an early stance to prevent wide-spread infection.
Daniel: We, as teachers, we were still teaching face to face. We had to wear face masks, spray our hands with alcohol, we had to get our temperatures checked every day but apart from that it was life as usual.
Jenn: When you're around students, you are wearing a mask, and when you come into the school, make sure you wash your hands and get your temperature taken, but beyond that, it's pretty fantastic here. You can almost live life as normal, everything's still open.
Alejandro: You can go to restaurants, you can go to movie theatres, you can go to a concert if you want to. The only thing is you have to wear it on public transit, that is, a mask, and that's not a big deal. Just regular life as back to normal.
Sophia: It's almost the strangest, like, opposite feeling of FOMO, almost where it's not really fear of missing out, it's almost like guilt that we're not experiencing the same hardships as everybody else.
David: COVID around the world, and then living in Taiwan, has left me with a certain amount of guilt because there's a lot of freedoms and a lot of things that I can do that my family can't do, and my friends back home can't do. I may be out at a restaurant with friends, or I am out at a night market. If I take a picture, they will see people that are not socially distancing, they'll see some people without masks. It's left me with a little bit of guilt, but at the same time, with a lot of gratitude.
Araceli: As I read the news, or I listen to the news, or I get updates of the family, you know, I'm very fortunate to be in the country that I'm in right now. Now, as far as affecting me personally because of family, just hearing the stories or what's happening back in other countries, having to deal with that, in itself, emotionally here.
Sophia: We're honestly so fortunate to be living in a country where they've been so proactive with everything to do with COVID-19, where we don't have local transmission and that anything that did happen locally was immediately taken care of, where I can see my students face to face, and where everyone just wears masks, because it's a common courtesy and the right thing to do, even if there's no immediate danger.
David: I don't need to worry about lockdown, I don't need to fear being around people, I don't need to stay at home, I don't need to worry about planning classes online. We feel extremely lucky to be here.
Sophia: Honestly, it's a huge privilege right now to just be able to live our daily lives without constant fear or that kind of weight upon us.