A Young Anthropologist's Notebook

Life is slowly going back to normal.  Last weeks restaurants and shops opened again, we are allowed to move around our own region and most people are now back at work for good. It seems the virus has stopped spreading as fast as it used to do, less and less people are being admitted in the hospital everyday and less and less people are dying from COVID. Nevertheless, the risk of an increase in numbers  of contagions is still high and most of us are walking on egg shells when it comes to going back to a somewhat "normal life". In the past week I started hanging out with people again, had an aperitivo at the bar, went to the seaside, had dinner in a restaurant, took more than a walk in the city centre.  The weather is nice and Summer comes early in Rome, so the feeling most of us share is that we are on the first day of a holiday we wanted for a very long time.  The first time I saw people sitting down at a pub, drinking and chatting as if anything had happened - even ...

Since last Monday, in Italy we have been living in what we call "Phase 2".  We are enjoying our re-found freedom, walking in parks, getting a take-away meal from a bar or a restaurant, meeting up with friends and relatives.  Some of us - and I put myself in this group - are afraid this is just a break and soon we will be back to full-quarantine mode, or at least some parts of the country will. Others are more optimistic and are fully enjoying this new "Phase", sometimes recklessly.  Despite I could be meeting up with other people now, I am still refraining myself from doing it. I am aware I am way too careful and I should probably do something different from what I have been doing in the past two months, but I am a bit afraid I am not used to being with people anymore.  I mean, I was somewhat of an introvert, not-very-social person before and this situation simply heightned my natural traits; but I think living through a pandemic, on some levels, aw...