Some University of Kentucky international students faced difficulties returning to Lexington due to the recent winter storm resulting in over 24-hour travel days. 

The snow and ice storm that occurred the weekend of Jan. 11 caused canceled and delayed flights for a few international students returning to Kentucky for the spring semester from tropical countries. 

Quézia Arruda Cunha, a junior journalism major, said her usual travel from her home in Niterói, Brazil to Lexington, Kentucky typically lasts 10 to 11 hours, but she ended up experiencing overnight travel. 

Arruda Cunha departed from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at 7 a.m. on Dec. 10 traveling to Lima, Peru, then to Atlanta, Georgia. Arruda Cunha said she was then expecting to quickly fly to Lexington.

“When we got to Atlanta, that’s where everything started to happen,” Arruda Cunha said. “It was chaos.”

Arruda Cunha said she and a friend, Camila Pimentel, who she was traveling with, ended up waiting inside their plane at the Atlanta airport for four hours after landing with no internet service to contact anyone.

“I don’t know if there was ice,” Arruda Cunha said. “I don’t know what was happening.” 

According to Arruda Cunha, who was placed on the standby list, passengers waiting for a seat to become available on a flight, did not guarantee they would be on the next flight to Lexington. 

“I had to wait at the airport for more than 24 hours and they (Delta Airlines) didn’t want to give us a hotel voucher or a food voucher,” said Arruda Cunha.

Arruda Cunha said she received $12 to Chick-fil-A after waiting in line to talk to customer service for hours. She said with the prices at the airport, she wasn’t able to afford any food. 

Pimentel and Arruda Cunha didn’t receive a hotel voucher so they ended up sleeping on the Atlanta airport floor waiting for a flight back to Lexington.

She was relieved to have landed in Lexington on Dec. 11, Arruda Cunha said, two days before the UK spring semester began. 

“We were so tired, we just wanted to take a shower and eat properly and get out of there,” Arruda Cunha said.

Despite the mental and physical preparation for the snow, Arruda Cunha said she still has a soft spot for it.

“I still love the snow. I think it’s super inconvenient, but it’s beautiful,” Arruda Cunha said.

Although Arruda Cunha made it back before the semester began, Mauricio Sancho, a junior mechanical engineering major from Heredia, Costa Rica missed his first day of classes due to expensive plane tickets.

Sancho said he was planning on traveling back to Lexington on Dec. 11, but when ticket prices skyrocketed due to the winter storm, he said he struggled to find one at a decent price.

“I wasn’t even able to get a flight that landed in Lexington till Dec. 14,” Sancho said.

According to Sancho, most international students end up taking two to three flights to get back to Lexington.

Sancho said he likes to spend as little money on plane tickets as possible and usually spends 20 to 24 hours traveling.

When Sancho saw the winter storm entering Kentucky, he said he was left to worry about his pipes freezing in his apartment and his flight possibly getting canceled due to the storm.

According to Sancho, he lost access to student resources like MyUK and his student email while in Costa Rica, so emailing professors that he would miss the beginning of the semester was impossible.

This loss of connection only occurs in the winter Sancho said, not during the summer. 

Most of his professors have been really understanding of his circumstances, he said. 

Navigating flight tickets and possible cancellations is not the only hard thing about returning to Kentucky in the winter. Sancho said that mentally and physically preparing for the cold can be very difficult.

“Costa Rica is really warm,” Sancho said. “It doesn’t ever get this cold, so I didn’t really have any winter clothes.”

Sancho said he was grateful for the Coats for Cats program UK offers, because trying to get winter clothes in time for the Kentucky winters is really hard.

Marianna Escobedo, a senior sociology and gender and women’s studies major from Guatemala City, Guatemala said she doesn’t have a car, so getting to a store to buy winter clothes is very difficult for her. 

“My freshman year we saw snow and it was the first time ever in my life I saw snow falling,” Escobedo said.

According to Escobedo, she tried to pack her thickest clothes before coming back to Kentucky, but even those were not enough.

“I met a really nice family who gave me a jacket as a gift, it’s a special jacket for winter. That was my savior for the winter,” Escobedo said about her first time experiencing a Kentucky winter. 

Despite the struggles snow can bring, Escobedo said she enjoys being able to experience snow.

“I would say I enjoy building a snowman or doing snowball fights,” Escobedo said. “That is nice.”

Ana Carolina De Souza, a junior aerospace engineering major from Vitoria, Brazil said that growing up watching media depicting snow in a country without it caused a desire to one day experience snowfall. 

“Once I came here and I saw snow for the first time, I was enchanted,” De Souza said. 

She said despite the snow sometimes making her want to stay home, she can still enjoy experiencing a completely different climate than what she grew up with.