Quake (Written 5/3/06)

At around 4am (9am CST/ 10am EST) this morning, my house began shaking
violently and I had no idea what was going on. I've had vivid dreams
before but nothing like this one – but I still kind of counted it as
just a dream and went safely back to bed. It wasn't until I woke up at
7am and noticed that the usual loud noise of kids was not there that I
knew something was up. Well, sometime last night there was an 8.1
Richter scale earthquake that occurred near Tonga and we were able to
feel the tremor here – which is what I felt at 4am. The odd thing is
that everyone up on this mountain felt the quake but the kids down in
the low lying areas did not (they had no idea a quake had occurred).
So the prime minister cancelled all schools for the day in response to
the tsunami warnings that were placed on the pacific region. But I did
feel like I was back home in Nashville because while schools were
cancelled early in the morning, the threat was gone (and all the
tsunami warnings lifted) before school even started (kind of like how
in Nashville when it snows, schools close but the snow will be gone by
9am). As for me, I'm fine so no worries but I don't know if the other
volunteers around the island even felt the earthquake (but they'll
know since schools were cancelled). My first real earthquake and I
slept right through it – those things aren't so scary after all! j/k.
L8r.