Study Abroad, Interrupted

It was a mild February night--typical for Florence in mid-Winter, I'd come to realize. Borgo Pinti, in the Santissima Annunziata neighborhood of Florence, Italy, was quiet, except for a dorm of about twenty students who just found out that their semester abroad was being put on pause--as we thought at the time--abruptly.

I, just like many of my roommates, had more questions than the singular email we had received from the NYU Florence administration provided. Classes for the week would be cancelled, our classes through spring break would be taught remotely, and we would not have to leave campus housing, but there was a strong possibility Florence would be put under military quarantine and NYU would be unable to help us if we chose to stay in the city. In other words, it was a situation completely beyond my point of references and my experiences; it sounded like something which could only happen in a book or a movie. Even though my roommates put up a good front, I could tell they shared my anxiety and uncertainty. Within minutes, some of them had already booked their tickets back to the United States and would leave our apartment less than twelve hours later. 

We were caught in a strange space. On one hand, NYU Florence's response seemed a bit severe--at that point in time, the pandemic was not yet a pandemic; the number of Italian cases was 229, contained nearly entirely to the northern regions of Italy, which did not include Tuscany; Italy's government was doing everything in its power to keep its borders open. In other words, February 24 felt like a day like any other day I'd spent in Florence. Yet, as we congregated in our Florentine home, it seemed like we were running against the clock, like we had to get out of Italy before we were left stranded, or worse, under the military quarantine we'd heard about being imposed on some towns up north.

A sleepless night later, I heard from Barnard and Columbia, both of which had not yet mandated that we had to get out of Europe, but strongly recommended that we get out of Italy as soon as possible (the official mandate would come a bit later). Three of my six roommates had already left for the airport and the rest of us were scrambling to empty the apartment in 72 hours. As luck would have it, we had all just gone grocery shopping. 

With much less than $1,300 for a flight home in my bank account and a stubborn determination to stay in Europe until classes reconvened in Florence at the end of March (as NYU had originally planned before the outbreak turned into a pandemic), I set off for London, where my friend and former roommate was studying. At the time, it seemed like the best choice, especially considering there were direct flights from London to New York and I would not be alone: in that moment, what I needed more than anything was someone to give me a hug and tell me it was going to be okay. 

Even as I was putting my bags into the taxi to the airport, a strange sense of normal hung in the air. The taxi driver didn’t assume I was a foreigner escaping before the lockdown, as a taxi driver in Madrid did just two weeks later, when I was finally coming home. People were still congregating in the bars we drove past and parents were still picking their children up from school. When I got to the airport, nobody asked where I was going and nobody stopped me to take my temperature. Hardly anyone at the time was wearing a face mask and flights were leaving mostly as scheduled, with a couple diverted due to bad weather. It was an eerie feeling of normal.

The immigration agent languidly stamped my passport with fading ink: uscita, Italia. I was leaving Italy and now it felt more final. A part of me knew, even then, there was a chance I wouldn’t come back, but I had no idea what was to come. When I touched down in London, I contacted my friends, my family, Barnard and NYU to let them know I’d gotten there safely. Nobody in the airport even thought twice about the fact that I was coming from Italy--I was an American citizen, therefore, I was able to pass through immigration without so much as a stamp in my passport. 

In London, there was chatter about the virus, but people carried on normally, packing into public transit, flocking to art galleries and museums, joining together at pubs. Even now as I write this, it’s surreal to think that was just five weeks ago. I knew just one person in the city of nearly nine million people, so I wandered around aimlessly, speaking to barely anyone but appreciating the comfortable quiet in the metro and the meaningless pleasantries while ordering a coffee, both of which I’ve come to miss during this period of social distancing. 

After spending a week in London, I packed my big 50 pound suitcase--all my worldly possessions I would need for a semester--and went to Madrid, where another Barnard friend waited for me and where it was beginning to look like my study abroad period might come to a close. In the airport, I’d noticed flights headed for Italy with no gate information next to them, but all the other cities--Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon--passed by in a quick and monotonous fashion. The news from Italy by the first week of March was getting worse and worse, but it was the sort of thing which wasn’t brought up. With my curiosity and intermediate Italian skills, I eavesdropped on the occasional Italian tourist, wondering where they were coming from and almost wanting to ask them how they were. 

I was with a friend, calmly planning a day of sightseeing when I got the news alert that all of Italy was on lockdown. I was sure then that I wasn’t going back. I didn’t have time to feel sad about it because all I knew was I had to get home. A day or two later, I booked a return flight back to New York from Madrid. At that point in time, Madrid was still carrying on, business as usual, though the number of cases in Europe was growing. As luck would have it (finally some good luck!) I had booked a flight before President Trump announced the ban on flights from the European Union (my plane landed, quite literally, just hours before the ban would be put in place). I was so relieved to be back home, so happy to see my family, and of course, so disappointed that things turned out the way they did. 

In all, I spent less than a month in Italy and in Florence. There were so many things, so many quintessentially Florence things I didn’t do because I thought I had more time: I never climbed up il Duomo; I never went into Santa Croce; I never went to the Boboli Gardens or Palazzo Vecchio or Galleria dell’Accademia. There’s a lot to feel sad about, the what-ifs and could-have-beens of Spring 2020, but I can’t and I don’t feel too sorry for myself. I know how lucky I am, for so many reasons and in so many contexts. 

I don’t diminish the sadness and disappointment of myself and other people who were planning on being abroad this semester--it’s awful (or to borrow a very British word, it’s rubbish). I think we’re allowed to feel let down and disappointed without denying the fact that there are people who are going through much harder experiences, whether they are people in more vulnerable populations or communities, people working on the frontlines, or people who have been personally impacted by the virus. 

There are things I would do differently: I would have spent more time seeing the sites in Florence; I would have gotten an earlier flight back to the United States; I would have been more careful and more conscientious before returning home. But this semester has been an experience--at times a good experience, at other times a terrible experience, sure--and I’ve learned a lot from it. 

It’s April 2020 and I think there is a lot to feel cautiously optimistic about. For one thing--as cheesy as it sounds, I know--this experience has truly reaffirmed that choosing Barnard was the right decision for me. Barnard being a small community makes it a lot easier to communicate with all the relevant offices and people. I’m really proud of my school for implementing a universal pass/fail policy during this particularly stressful time. But most of all, I’ve been shown by my classmates how good people are to one another--whether it’s alumnae helping out Barnard students in any way they can, students offering to pack up for other students who left early with the expectation that they’d be able to come back and pack, or people just sharing information with each other and wishing each other well. 

To paraphrase something I read in an article recently (I have read so many news articles in the last several weeks, I could not possibly even guess where I read this), we can stand to lose a vacation or a couple fights with our parents about washing the dishes, but we cannot stand to lose our humanity. I lost my dream study abroad experience, sure, but I like to think that I gained something in the process.