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What We're Learning from the Pandemic

Just like so many people around the world, our group’s plans have come to a screeching halt as we fight the global COVID-19 pandemic. Certainly no one anticipated this is how our year would play out, and with this we are reminded of the sheer unpredictability of our world as travelers. For several Senior members of Baxter International, including myself, this was the last chance we had to pursue high school travel and Flex Friday in general, and that - for lack of better words - really sucks.


However, BAI has still been able to remain in contact these last four weeks via video chat, and it seems we’ve found one common idea among us: we are grateful and we are learning. Although so many students aren’t able to travel this year, we are still finding ways to remain active members of our global community. We’re cooking international food, we’re learning new languages, we’re writing blog posts, and we’re grateful that we ever had the ability to travel in the first place.


During a time that feels so overwhelming, we find great joy in daydreaming about far-off places or recounting the travel stories we’ve collected over the years. In fact, this Friday we’ll be doing just that. We’ve each chosen two images from our travels that tell a story and we’ll be sharing those stories with the group on our weekly Google Meets call. While we may not be able to travel how we originally expected, we can still travel vicariously through our peers’ and our own experiences abroad.


Above all, I think this wacky time has demonstrated the importance of flexibility. When we are finally able to explore our world safely again, my hope is that we will use this experience to learn from and adjust accordingly. As a group, we’ve now lived the twists and turns of travel first-hand. We’ve learned through experience that not everything - sometimes even nothing - will go to plan, but we know that no matter what happens we will learn. We will learn how important it is to roll with the punches - and isn’t that the best kind of traveler after all?



Written by Nick Caruso, April 2020


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