Dear World Entry COVID-19 stories

I submitted a self portrait and my self-isolation story to Dear World as part of their global photographers campaign in sharing our lockdown stories, fears, hopes and triumphs with writing on the skin. My story and portrait is featured on their website: https://stories.dearworld.org/028-Craving-Noodles-1 and below: Dear World, Back in September I was working in Asia - Japan and China for 4 months touring the countries with shows alongside 5 other cast members to predominantly teach English through theatre. We had met for a month of rehearsals in June and knew the next time we would see each other would either be on the plane or in our first destination, Japan. Skip forward to a couple months into the tour to November 2019. It was a rainy evening in the relentless Shanghai, we had worked an intense week and were feeling pretty tired and homesick. Being in a distant country where we couldn’t speak the language, were scheduled to a routine and changing hotels every few days we started to feel out of touch and somewhat similar to isolated. Our way of coming together and getting through these tough phases were through games, quizzes, trivia, food, chatting, FaceTiming - all things I’m finding are getting me through this lockdown time. As much as travelling can be about absorbing all that the place has to offer it is also about gaining perspective and reflecting into what your own country offers; Finding new appreciations for the small things, the food, history, culture and people. There were only so many noodles that I could eat till I started missing the classic British roast (and I don’t even eat that many roasts.). Here I am now, a few months later, writing from the dining room with a glorious cuppa tea. I couldn’t be closer to home living back with my parents. From one isolation extreme to the other, here I am craving those noodle dishes more than ever. I missed the guys. I had to reach out, set up a quiz and re-connect. Sincerely, Craving Noodles