If You Are ‘Going Bananas’ Because of Coronavirus, Make Banana Bread
In the time since I’ve been home from my semester abroad, social distancing protocol has made for a lot of free time – which means that I’ve been doing A LOT of baking. As a fun way to pass the time, I’ve been learning how to make cookies, muffins, cakes….and my personal favorite, banana bread, all from scratch.
Now you are probably wondering why I am talking about baking in a blog that is meant to tell the story of my experience with COVID-19 and my semester abroad in Spain – and in literal terms, there is not a lot in common. The connection is more metaphorical. To best understand just how I ended up watching the second Lego Movie with subtitles and playing a “Doodle Jump” tournament on my Kindle Fire with the students sitting next to me on the flight home, you have to know how to make metaphorical banana bread out of life.
To best explain, I have to start with the baking secret that I just learned a few weeks ago, which is that overripe bananas are the best for baking because they are the sweetest. I am talking about the brown-spotted, mushy bananas that have been sitting on everyone’s countertop for way too long. It's the kind of banana that I avoid at all costs.
That being said, the first time I attempted to bake banana bread not too long ago, I opted to use the bananas that looked like they came straight out of a magazine photo. Unfortunately, yet not all that surprising, this meant that my first banana bread was terrible. It wasn’t nearly as sweet as I thought it would be, and it was way too dry.
In desperate need of guidance after my first failure, I looked to the online experts of “The Food Network'' and realized just what I was missing. As it turns out, the perfect ingredients are not always the best ingredients.
Now if you have read this much of my long winded analogy, you’ll understand that getting sent home two months early from my semester abroad in Spain was the equivalent of life handing me the UGLIEST bananas it could find. By themselves, they would have been impossible to eat. But when I used them to make banana bread, which in this case was a memorable trip home, they were perfect.
With less than 48 hours notice, I went through three airports, two flights, and over 24 hours of travel to get home. Part of this trek home included a five hour layover in London with dozens of other young American students, all sharing the same frustration that their semesters were cut short.
But with the help of these same students and my airplane-seat neighbors, I did not leave this amazing experience on a low note. Instead of letting the circumstances surrounding the pandemic ruin our trip, we chose to make some metaphorical banana bread in the form of comical trivia competitions and video game tournaments. Our anything but serious, yet incredibly memorable narration of a children’s movie was exactly how we made the most of the less than ideal situation surrounding the coronavirus outbreak.
Author: Schuyler Alpaugh
Program: Manhattan College in Madrid, Spring 2020 semester
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