I have been grappling with how to process the fact that I am back in Michigan, and on my last day of self quarantine!

At first I was lost, confused, and extremely heartbroken. We woke up to an email (sent at 3 am by the study abroad director at CMU) saying we were to pack our bags and schedule a flight home immediately. I was in a hostel in Nice, France when I woke up to read the message when I burst into tears, unable to explain why I was so distraught to my very good friends on the bunks next to me. I got out the words, “we’re being sent home,” I will never forget that moment.

As you can imagine, this was before anything with COVID-19 had become too serious. Life was still going on as normal in Italy, nobody seemed worried about it. Now in hindsight this could be why COVID-19 spread to fast throughout Italy. The locals in Florence seemed unfazed, even expressing how ridiculous it was for us to have to go home so abruptly.

So when we arranged flights to leave in 4 days, we inevitably had loads of questions. Would I still graduate in May? Classes? How was CMU going to handle refunds? Were we going to be in quarantine? Stopped at the airport? What was it like in the US? Couldn’t we stay and wait it out? Did they even realize how this made us feel? Did CMU care if we were sick? (nobody asked)

With 16 CMU students in Italy, I am sure CMU had an overload of emails from us and parents alike… but we had not gotten any clear answers or even an email response for hours. It was agonizing to not know what was going to happen to us or to our classes.

Eventually my dear roommate and friend Maddy received a call from the director herself over her strongly worded email (go Karen!) and 11 of us were in the room anyways, so we passed the phone around to ask all of the questions we could think of. After running our director’s international calling minutes down to nearly empty, we all felt better knowing that we did have people there to help us out.

That’s all it took. A physical phone call, hearing somebody explaining the situation and reassuring that we will not be penalized for this. And that my friends is lesson number 1 from all of this mess:

in a time of crisis, leadership needs to call those in the middle of it all.

So, as asked, we hastily packed out bags and said goodbye to the city that we had finally become comfortable with. The kitchen was fully stocked, so we hosted a pot luck and tried our best to get our fill to avoid food waste. We walked the outdoor markets, finding trinkets to bring home to our family to prove that yes, I DID go to Italy (although it feels like a dream now). I saw the David and the beautiful artwork in The Accademia gallery. I had some delicious paninis, spent time with the locals, and used many meal swipes.

Come Wednesday, I did not even feel alive, just going through the motions to follow orders and come home. This is where I am also shocked… not a single airport checked our temperatures nor tested us in any way shape or form. Despite it was March 4th, but the travel bans had already begun… So in both Paris at CDG and Detroit at DTW, we were not checked for the big bad COVID-19!

Fast forward to now, March 18th and I believe that is a very different story for travelers now as there are international travel bans (and rumors of travel bans within the US). Now my friends at CMU also have online classes, nearly the entire state of Michigan is under orders to stay put.

Social media is a war zone, people voicing their opinions in every which way creating very unproductive and destructive conversation.

So now Michigan is under quarantine, and I am grateful for CMU pulling the plug on our program at the time that they did. Families are home, kids not at school, a time that has potential to be spent learning about each other.

Being directed to stay home and social distance ourselves can be scary, but it also is a time dedicated to rest and self discovery. Take this time to rediscover passions, maybe that is reading or walking. Maybe you write a novel inspired by your circumstances or learn how to cook. For me, I will be reevaluating what I want from life, reading lots, and keeping up on my online classes. I will hopefully be helping at GAP again and babysitting as needed to save up for an apartment.

In one of the first few days back, I felt ostracized, forgotten about, and ridiculed for having followed my dreams to travel. In that moment, I decided that nothing is permanent and that I should actively take hold of my life future.

I placed my deposit for the University of Michigan Social Work program beginning in the fall.

Lesson number two from the heartbreak:

Take hold of what you can control

And for me, that was taking control of what I wanted my future to look like. Now I have something to look forward to. A ray of light amidst all of this darkness.

I have not completely processed the events of the past month or so, but I am beginning to look onward as well as back in fondness of the time I was able to spend abroad.

If you’ve managed to read this post in its entirety, I appreciate you. It’s not easy having your dreams flipped upside down but we WILL come out better on the other side.

xoxo