She had arrived, literally. Her dreams had come true. New job, new city, now country. But software engineer Sun Ling didn't expect that her life would be dramatically upended before her arrival in New York due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

"2020 is a tough year," Sun says, adding that she will stay strong. She lost her father and job within two months.

Born in 1990 in Loudi, Hunan province, Sun gained a certain amount of fame last year. She had turned her life around. A 10-year journey from a factory worker, who left a rural high school, to a software engineer at Google in New York with an annual salary of about $120,000.

In early March, she took a leave of absence to return to Loudi to spend the last moments she could with her father who was battling lung cancer. Her father passed away three days after her arrival on March 9 when she was stuck in a 14-day quarantine period at a local hotel. She could not attend the funeral.

Due to her father's death, her original 84-day family and medical leave was changed into a 30-day personal leave. The deadline for her to go back to office was April 30. Due to the travel ban from the United States, Sun could not make it and she lost her job.

What's worse was that her I-20(Certificate of Eligibility for nonimmigrant student status) worked against her. It only allows her to leave the US for five months (before Aug 7) and she is allowed less than three months of unemployment (before July 30) while on year one of Optional Practical Training.

In the face of uncertainty, she has been wrestling with anxiety and confusion about where to go and what to do.

In late June, she decided to go back to the US to explore more possibilities with her two-year OPT extension available.

"If I cannot find a job in the US, I can always come back home," Sun says, adding that she wants to be sure to explore every opportunity available to be able to continue her US journey.

To make it happen, she booked a ticket from Guangzhou, Guangdong province, to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, and after nucleic acid testing negative and staying for 14 days there, she flew onward to New York. Arriving at New York on July 13, she has been busy with job interviews.

"I know it will not be easy for me to find an ideal job due to the current situation in the US, such as COVID-19, cultural differences and language," Sun says.

In the US, the unemployment rate in June fell to 11.1 percent, slightly down from its peak in April when it hit a record 14.7 percent, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total number of unemployed was 17.75 million.

The US government has expanded restrictions, limiting foreign worker visas through the end of the year, which makes foreign workers, like Sun, feel the pain of job cuts.

Having two or three interviews online or over the phone, Sun admits that now is her "lowest point" in life.

"In the past, hard work paid off, but now with the pandemic, everything is out of control," she sighs.

Having been rejected by several companies, the normally optimistic Sun feels depressed and less confident. She has dropped her reading habits to spend more time on interview skills and software knowledge.

She keeps telling herself to live in the moment and not to be afraid of rejection, because "every interview is a chance to learn something".

Pre-pandemic

It was her positive attitude that helped her to get where she was before the COVID-19 outbreak.

Born to a farmer's family in a remote village, Sun had an elder brother, who, as the only son, enjoyed more attention from their parents. She was forced to temporarily drop out of junior high school to learn hairdressing.

After a two-month apprenticeship, which proved that she could not become a hairdresser, she persuaded her father to let her return to school. She finished high school in 2009, but her national college entrance exam's score failed to get her into college.

Left with no other choice, like her peers from the rural area, she took a 14-hour train to Shenzhen and became a worker in a battery factory. Working 12 hours every day, it was hard and physical.

In 2010, she quit the job and registered to learn coding at a computer training organization, which cost her 30,000 yuan ($4,287) for three semesters. At that time, there was less than 9,000 yuan in her bank account. This paid for her first semester, which was 8,900 yuan.

To finish her course, she took various jobs, such as KFC waitress, consumer service representative and flyer distributor. Sometimes she worked until midnight. She applied for a credit card to make ends meet.

In 2011, she became a programmar at a Shenzhen company with a monthly salary of about 4,000 yuan. Living a more stable life for seven months, Sun wanted to become "smarter" and she chose to learn English in 2012.

"I didn't become smarter after one-and-half years of English lessons, but I got a new mindset," Sun says.

In 2015, she earned a self-study bachelor's degree in information technology administration and management from Shenzhen University.

In 2017, she applied for a master's degree in computer science in the US, which required basic English communication skills, experience in coding and a down payment of 50,000 yuan for tuition.

In October 2017, she went to study in the US and got a job offer from Google vendor, EPAM Systems, in September 2018. One month later, she started to work as a contract software engineer at Google's Manhattan headquarters.

In The Fourth Turning, a book which Sun recently finished, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe write that "time is a spiral". It means that people consistently circle the same themes and challenges in life and the "struggles simply mark another loop on the climb".

Maybe, she says, the current difficulty is just another loop on her climb.