Germany, Zeven: Alexandra Wiese, 18, student
7 | Essay-collection by students of a 12th grade English course
Right now it is 9 am, for me still a bit early in the morning, and I am starting my routine as usual in this time. If you’re wondering what I mean: The Corona-Virus, which first appeared in China, developed into a pandemic pretty fast and is now distributed into an amount of countries: France, Italy, England, the US and of course my native country Germany…
… To put it in another way, we all are in a time of self-isolation right now, meaning all of us are allowed to meet one other person that does not belong to your own household. Well, if this is a relaxing time of finding myself, or a horrific period of loneliness… I must admit, I am not sure. But for now, let’s just come back to my usual routine.
After having breakfast with my parents, which always turns out to be absolutely funny by the reason of my dad who is just joking without a pause and my mum being fairly annoyed because of his bad jokes, I do my homework. Every student, especially 12th graders like me, get a whole bunch of exercises with a deadline. These things usually take me about four to five hours, but that is okay.
Then, in the afternoon, I try playing the guitar. This is a new skill I really wanted to learn for literally so long. The big instrument out of wood sounding so magical always touches my soul and I even try singing to the melody I’m playing. Even though it doesn’t sound so well as one can imagine, it is absolutely fun.
Sometimes I meet friends and most of the time it turns out to be Lotta, a genuinely talkative and understanding person with blond hair that she dyed in a natural red colour, because what else should one do during self-isolation? This certain afternoon she asks “How you doing? Anything new?” She must have seen that something is stressing me out. Did I already mention that she is quite empathic? “Well,” I answered, “Tomorrow we start renovating the whole corridor and the kitchen and I know it will be really loud and even worse it will pressure my parents and me into staying in the living room for the whole day. We will totally get on each others nerves.” As soon as these words came out of my mouth, I knew everything will change from now. Everything will be different.
And it starts with Horst, the craftsmen, who arrived Monday punctual at 7 am. You remember me mentioning that even 9 am is still a bit early for me, right? The man is in his mid 40’s and talks extremely loudly, it feels like he reaches the volume of a pneumatic-hammer, which he uses, by the way, to get rid of our tiles. In fact, the tall man seems to be nice and does his work in a positive way, but nevertheless he is the reason for me having to get up at 7 am and being pressured to sit with my family in the cramped living room, which is just horrible.
So when will we be free and allowed to meet more persons than only one? One will never know. We can just hope.
