When I left Hamilton and The Continental in December to prepare for my semester abroad, I could never have anticipated how incredible of an experience it would turn out to be, or how suddenly it would all come to an end. I was part of the Hamilton program in Madrid for all of eight weeks— albeit eight of the best weeks of my life. We arrived in Spain in early January and were forcibly ejected from the country in mid-March, along with almost every other student studying abroad in Europe at the time. During my stint in Madrid I learned some Spanish, travelled to some amazing places, and met some friends I’ll surely have for life. Coronavirus has undoubtedly affected every person around the world, some more than others. And while I would never claim to have it the hardest (seniors, you have my condolences), I will always hold a special kind of hate in my heart for this virus for robbing me of the next best eight weeks of my life.
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Our story of coronavirus displacement is perhaps the most unique out there. We went from having normal classes on Monday, to moving to online classes Tuesday, to Trump closing the borders on Wednesday, until finally being told on Thursday by our directors that we had to “abandon” the country by midnight on Friday. I’m not sure I could adequately put into words the carnage that message left on our group, given we were all enjoying a bit of wine and sun in Retiro Park when we got the news. After a long night of calling our parents, frantically trying to book a flight home, while also hastily saying goodbye to our friends and host families who we might well not see again, we were all off on separate flights back to the US. It was an emotional time, but also a slightly numbing one, as no one really had time to process what was happening. All too soon we were back in the US which is when it really hit—abroad was over.
