Friday, August 24, 2007

Here it is. What so many have asked for. Wednesday night, the night of the earthquake I was on a couch watching an ice skating movie featuring Will Ferrel and the dude from Napolean Dyanamite. I think there were 7 of us on the couch. Oh yeah, we were in some hospedaje located on the second floor of an old rickety building. Think ¨Old Spaghetti Factory¨...architecture wise. There was no food there. We started to feel the temblor and we were not that scared because we had all been woken up before my minor earthquakes in Peru. However, this one continued, so we hurriedly made our way under a doorway. It started getting really, really shaky and a window busted out and shattered at our feet. It lasted two minutes. That is a long time for an earthquake. Afterwards we went outside to avoid being stuck in the building in the case that their might be aftershock. Everybody in Lima must have been thinking the same thing, because the streets were packed full of people and all trying to use their cell phones. There was no service all night. Some of our friends were in a bar close to the ocean. We walked that way to check on them and realized that we were walking against the current. Everybody was walking away from the ocean.. We figured that that was not a good sign but we wanted to find our friends.. Later I went to the internet to email my fam in case it had made news and they were freaking out. I learned that it was the number one story on CNN and had ranked 8.0 at the epic center (ICA). I opened up my email and low and behold my dad had already written me to see if I was okay. News travels fast.

Some volunteers live in Ica, 90 miles south of Lima, where the earthquake actually happened. Luckily they were not there at the time. They called their host familys. They were okay, but were telling stories about houses destroyed and neighbors dead. No food because the owners of the stores won´t sell it because they are using it to feed their families. No water, Dead bodies in the roads and everybody sleeping outside due to lack of housing or fear of the earthquake reaccuring.

2 Comments:

Blogger John H said...

thanks..about dang time! You don't know how happy that email made me (and the rest of the family) and many others.

I love your misspelling of 'epic center' (as opposed to epicenter)..i'm sure the folks nearby felt like it WAS an epic center!

love ya - dad

1:35 PM  
Blogger Josh said...

Glad you're ok, and your friends, too. That's horrible about those people down in Ica. That shows character going back to find your friends in such a perilous situation. Hopefully, you'll get to finish watching Blades of Glory soon, too. It looks funny, but I haven't seen it. I think I'll go rent it, now that I'm on the subject.

Love,
Josh

5:30 PM  

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