I am a 12 years old girl and my name is Gaia. I live in Italy in Pisa with my sister Apolline who is 8 and my mum. From the second week of lockdown (beginning of March) my school started online lessons. We used Zoom to communicate. I do 10 subjects and each teacher took turns to deliver their lesson. My day started at 9am when my first period teacher would take the register. We had to sit in a quiet place with our school equipment and dress accordingly (we don’t wear uniforms in Italy). I had 3 lessons per day then break for lunch then back for back for 1 hour in the afternoon for homework. This was Monday to Friday every day until lockdown was over. For our final grades we took tests and our teachers kept track of what we were doing on Zoom.

During the day we were not allowed out apart from to the nearest shops (no further than 200 metres). Sometimes we would go to my grandparents who live 5 minutes away by bike for a couple of days so that my mum could carry on working. We had to be incredibly careful as there were many police cars roaming around, checking that people were not out without permission. We would leave in the evening with our bikes (me, my sister Apolline and my mum) with the bike lights switched off and a torch. If the police stopped us, they would have fined us 400 Euros each and my mum was very worried about this.

One night we saw a police car driving in our direction and we started cycling very fast and hid under a railway arch. We were so scared, but we kept giggling. My mum was quite angry, and she said that if the police heard us and fined us, she would take it off our pocket money until it was paid back! They didn’t see or hear us, and we got to my grandparents safely!

By Gaia, September 2020

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