EARTHQUAKE!

This afternoon at about 2:30, as I was laying in bed reading in between classes on the new campus, my stomach started to rumble. I thought maybe my lunch hadn't totally agreed with me until I noticed that the rumbling had grown, and soon the bed was shaking, the windows were shaking, the walls and floors were shaking. I have seen cartoons of earthquakes before and always thought that the undulating appearance of everything was a comic exaggeration, but it's not. That's exactly what it looked and felt like. I grabbed my laptop and stood in the doorway, a supposedly safer place. At that point I wasn't about to try to evacuate the building, what with everything moving as it was. After a few minutes the floor stopped moving, and a few more minutes after that the lights hanging from the ceiling stopped swinging, so I settled back in to my free afternoon.

Of course, Kitty came in about half an hour later to get some stuff and check if I was there and informed me that everyone else on campus had evacuated every building and were all standing outside waiting for further instruction. After going outside, Hou Laoshi (the teacher in charge of my freshman students) pointed out two huge cracks in a nearby academic building.

All afternoon classes were canceled, so I watched Kitty's students continue their game of kickball while we waited for more news. The news was mostly inconclusive, but eventually we found a student who had heard from Ma Jing that our evening classes would be canceled as well, so Kitty and I came home on the 6 o'clock bus.

This was my first earthquake, and apparently it was a 7.8 on the Richter scale in northwestern Sichuan province where it originated. The earthquake was felt as far away as Bangkok. Every time I check the news, it sounds worse. 4 kids dead in a collapsed elementary school in Chongqing. Somebody crushed by a fallen water tower. 900 students trapped in a high school in Sichuan. The latest confirmed death toll is 107, but estimates are up to 5000.

We've heard rumors of another quake coming within the next two hours, but the government hasn't released any official warning, and I have few sources of information. Cell phones mostly aren't working, and I haven't had any natural disaster units yet in Chinese class. Wish me luck.