As may be obvious, this exercise was invented for online education & further intended to help the students connect in face-to-face mode with the locals.  It's entirely adaptable to social distancing requirements in this pandemic situation, however; either by using e-mail and having the students connect in pairs over Whats-App or a similar app (and then report back to the instructor), or by using the "breakout session" feature of either Webex or Zoom.   Or, here are instructions for doing something similar in Google Hangouts.