Escaping Coronavirus in Florence, Italy
I am writing this from the seat of an airplane that I had no idea I would even be on fifteen hours ago. I have spent the past semester (and one month) of my freshman year studying abroad at NYU’s Florence campus. We were well aware of the spread of Coronavirus— one of our classmates was trapped in Wuhan and had to FaceTime in to class— but I think we were oblivious as to how this pandemic would affect our own lives. That is, until last night, at 11:45 pm, when every student studying in our program received an email informing us that we had three days to pack up our suitcases and leave campus. Three. The email claimed that we will be able to return in a month, although most people are skeptical of this. When friends said goodbye to each other, they did not say “see you in a month”, but “see you in New York, in the Fall”. In the meantime, NYU has set up online classes for us to take so we do not fall behind academically.