“Haley ur stuck in Europe for the next month,” read a text I received at 2 a.m. from my younger sister, in response to Trump’s European travel ban. What ensued was the start of maybe one of the most chaotic days of my life. After several frantic calls and texts to my parents, and discovering a small detail that Trump had forgotten to mention — that the ban did not apply to U.S. citizens — my parents decided it was time for me to cut my study abroad semester short and come home.
What I would go through in the next 48 hours was nothing short of a fever dream. It started on March 11th, as I ignored my parents’ pleas to postpone my trip to Madrid to visit a few of my friends from home. Madrid was experiencing a high level of chaos due to the city’s government prohibiting classes from meeting. As such, my friends’ study abroad program was canceled, and their futures in Madrid remained uncertain.
My parents feared things going wrong while I was there, leaving me to fend for myself, but I went nonetheless. While there, my friends told me about the possibility of transportation out of the city of Madrid being blocked, so I decided to switch my flight to Saturday instead of Monday. In spite of the stress of everyone scrambling to arrange their travel arrangements, we had a great time. But then, when we were loitering outside a friends’ dorm after a night out, I received that fateful text from my sister, and information about Trump’s travel ban came flooding in.
I booked a flight out of Madrid back to Paris for 7 a.m., only three short hours after we all went in for the night. I went back to Paris and packed, with no time to say any goodbyes, and headed to the airport again. When I started writing this, I was sitting in the Charles de Gaulle airport waiting for my plane to Stockholm to arrive. Once I got there, I stayed the night in Stockholm, and the next day I flew back to the states, to Newark, and then, finally, I arrived back home to Norfolk, Virginia Friday evening. This was the best my parents and I could do in the midst of websites crashing and airline helplines being blocked.
While the coronavirus panic has sufficiently made its way to the United States, it’s been a concern of those studying abroad in Europe for a while now. On Feb. 25, I woke up to social media posts from my friends studying at NYU Florence. Essentially, they received an email telling them that, due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Northern Italy, the program would meet remotely through March 20th, and that students living on campus would have to evacuate their housing within the coming weeks. They also strongly urged those living off-campus to evacuate, as well. Everyone was shocked – we couldn’t believe it was actually happening. My friends from NYU Paris and I joked that we were next without ~really~ meaning it, but sure enough, a few weeks later NYU pulled the plug on all study abroad programs in Europe, and my program, IES Abroad, followed shortly after. Now I’m home in Virginia self-quarantining.
Many students and people around the country are seeing events that they have long looked forward to being canceled because of the coronavirus – seniors, for example, may likely not be able to walk at graduation. It’s hard to see plans ruined, especially when they’re plans that have been in the making for years. Studying abroad was something that I’d been planning since middle school, and I had so many expectations for it. My experience got off to a rocky start. It took weeks to get over that initial hump and really start to enjoy myself. I know that, had I stayed, things would have only gotten better. Weather would have gotten warmer, I would have traveled more, and friendships would have been solidified. However, because I split when I did, I left Paris in a weird place. I don’t feel like I had a complete and life-changing experience. It had the opportunity to be that, but it never got to that point.
My memory of my time abroad is one that is unfulfilled and tragedy-stricken. When I think of the last few months, I think of loneliness and panic. I am thankful to be safe and home, especially as France goes into lockdown. Strange times call for strange circumstances, and what happening now is something that has never been seen before. However, as I sit here at home with nothing to do, I can’t help but think about what could have been, and how — taking money, time, and credit management into account — I will probably never get a redo.
