Corona in Amsterdam. A journal entry by Lauren Maat, aged 13

Hello my name is Lauren I was born in Ireland. I still visit Ireland every single year. I go to my Grandma and visit my Grandad, and I visit my friend Sabha too.

In February, after we had just come back from our last visit to Ireland, we had to go into lockdown. I had to work from home and not go outside. Well, that’s what everyone was supposed to do…….

First of all, suddenly everyone went on a rampage to the stores and bought everything they could find. My mom just decided to shop online but even then you had to wait until you could order. I also had to keep distance from my friends. After just a week however, I saw people behaving like there was no corona, not wearing a mask or anything.

My friends started playing again, but I just had to wait and do homework. You didn’t just have homework, you also had online school meetings, and I am telling you now they were the most boring thing on the planet.

You just had to look at a blank screen and hear about the homework we had to do and then just listen to people asking questions. The good thing about it was that I could sleep for longer. Normally, I wake up at 6 am and leave at 8:20 because my school is an hour’s cycle away.

First, they told us we only had to stay in quarantine for two weeks and slowly it turned into a million weeks of boredom. Not exactly a million weeks, but it did feel like that, as the weeks progressed, an hour felt like a year.

My school was closed, yet some of my friends were playing together even though this was not really allowed. It was very boring. Well, that’s enough about me and my boredom. You guys want to know how it is in Amsterdam in The Netherlands or as some people call it, Holland? Well, a lot of people live in Amsterdam, and it’s full of tourists. I was actually surprised how quickly the tourists were gone. Although the rule was to stay one and a half metres away from each other, many people still walked next to each other.

Today, I went to the store for the first time and I have to say, the rules were very strict. You had to disinfect your hands and your basket (and of course the bottle was not closed properly so it spilled everywhere). Now in the Netherlands, a lot has gone back to normal, especially with school. It’s just so weird I went to school weeks ago and no one kept distance (except for our geography teacher). So basically that’s how Amsterdam is doing, I don’t know if we are too easy-going but I guess we will see. Hope you guys enjoyed my story.

1 Comment

  1. Good to know about another place.

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