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Five thousand miles away from my home in a country where I struggled to speak the national language, a classroom full of inquisitive Italian middle school students stared up at me bright-eyed and bursting with questions about my American culture. “Brava! Brava!”, they would yell, when I successfully pieced together a basic response in Italian, such as introducing my name and age to them. It felt strangely comforting to have an unspoken understanding between them that I, too, was a student, despite my role in their life as an instructor. My first month in a new country understandably felt uncomfortable and language barriers presented a challenge when it came to creating friends and a network of people that I so readily had in my home country. The first lesson I learned whilst teaching stemmed from my students’ pride in my Italian vocabulary, albeit it was not quite an exhaustive list, and their eagerness to speak to me in my own language. No matter what background, heritage or borders we come from, we’re all just cheering each other on in little victories because the myriad of little things in life lay the foundation for big accomplishments. My students and I were earnestly striving to learn a new language and in doing so, opening the doors to a new worldview and shattering long-held stereotypes, even insignificant, comical ones such as the belief that all American’s put ketchup in pasta dishes. After my first few months, my students’ English strengthened to conversationalist levels, my Italian progressed two-fold and the whimsical city of Florence finally blossomed in my eyes from a place riddled with unknowns to a city welcoming me with open arms. Overnight, though, my new home was turned upside down in a state of turmoil. My new city of Florence, which felt eerily normal just hours before the state of emergency call, suffered resounding consequences from the world-wide pandemic of Covid-19. Desolate streets in a city that’s always bustling, down-trodden store owners closing up shop and thousands of students fleeing on emergency flights home were some effects of a virus that caused harm in ways that stretch beyond just illness. For many, a virus spreading like wildfire meant a muddied economy, livelihoods in question on a country built and sustained on tourism. As I watched the world-famous Duomo grow smaller and smaller from my plane window, I considered what this abrupt end of school meant for my students and I. More than just having travel or school plans pushed back and suspended, it meant a classroom full of students expectantly waiting for me as their ‘insegnante’, or teacher in Italian, to walk through the doors yet never showing up. No proper goodbye for the twenty kids that won’t ever know they were unsuspecting catalysts of change in my life for helping me learn a language, and in turn, to love a community, culture and country as my own.