Newman and her husband, Bob Fudge, are renting out their basement in Ogden, Utah, as an Airbnb — to Jenson, his twin brother Kyson, and their parents, Laura and Ben, who traveled from China.

“Ben wants to move here because of all the different kinds of food,” Laura says of her husband.

They booked a flight for the next day, arriving in Los Angeles, where they self-isolated for 14 days, before traveling north to Newman and Fudge’s basement.

Laura and Ben can’t return to China until the babies’ passports arrive, a process that can usually be expedited but not in the middle of a pandemic.

Laura jokes that they will have to stay until the boys are old enough to call Newman “grandma.”.

Newman and Fudge, 51, started renting their basement on Airbnb when they became empty-nesters in 2014, and they love getting to know people that they otherwise would have never met.

Before the babies were born, the two couples played table tennis together, and Laura and Ben taught Newman and Fudge to play mah-jongg.

Every morning, Laura joins Newman and Fudge for an hour-long hike.

Laura says the couple initially chose the Airbnb rental because of its proximity to Weber State University (where Fudge and Newman are both professors), reasoning that, in China, areas near universities are usually safer.

So far, Weber County, where Newman and Fudge’s home is located, has a relatively low rate of covid-19 infections per person as compared to the rest of the country.

“In China, when people know there is coronavirus outside, they just rarely go outside.

Newman and Fudge can hear when the babies are crying downstairs, when Laura and Ben are laughing or when Laura is lecturing her 8-year-old daughter back in China to finish her homework.

(She’s staying with a neighbor.) Laura has told Newman many times, “Your marriage is so good,” to which Newman responds: “Our marriage is easy.” It’s their second marriage for both of them; they have a home with plenty of space and a yard to keep them busy.

“Your marriage is very good because look at all the stress you’re under,” Newman says of Laura and Ben, while they’re still getting along, and cheerful every day.

When their daughter was born, they had so much help from family that Laura barely had to change a single diaper.

When Laura and Ben get back to China, they’ll have even more help, so now they’re cherishing this time, even as it’s fraught with uncertainty over when they’ll be able to return.

“This is a really good experience for us,” Laura says.