Heartland couple endure Coronavirus scare in China

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (KFVS) - A Carbondale couple is living in China and enduring an uneasy lifestyle as the coronavirus is sweeping across the country.

Derek Golliher and his wife Kacie moved to China for a year as she teaches an elementary school there in Nanjing.

Right now, the school has suspended classes after the spreading of the coronavirus. This goes along with many of other restaurants and stores across the large city and throughout the country.

“I’d say we’ve been more nervous than worried,” Kacie Golliher said. “When this first started happening, everything pretty much shut down and came to a halt. The city of 8 million people were pretty much on pause. It was a ghost town outside of our windows.”

Derek and Kacie said authorities in Nanjing placed restrictions on people where they could only leave once a day.

“We still have to wear the masks and they still take temperatures at the gate, at the grocery stores and any time you enter a store,” Kacie Golliher said.

The stores have been a little bare at times with many items selling out.

They said they have been able to get an adequate amount of food each trip and said the stores have started restocking more items as of late.

"Within the last three days a few stores have been opening now and then so it's starting to go back a little bit," Derek said.

He also said while they have been restricted in many ways, they have some friends in a neighboring district that have had it a little worse.

“One of our friends who is in a district north of us, she was telling us that the rules that the guards put in place there is that only one person can leave once every three days,” Derek Golliher. “It was her and her son there so her son wasn’t allowed to leave. It was just one person.”

Both Derek and Kacie mainly spend their time in their home and hope to get back in more of a normal rhythm when the school opens back up in the weeks to come.

For now, they have no plans to return home and plan to stay there until September when Kacie's school contract ends.

During their trip, they are also logging their experience on their “Go Beyond the Borders” Facebook page.

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