Earthquake and Hanging Out with the Local People

I guess you could say this has been a rather eventful week. First, the earthquake. Neither JB nor I have ever been in an earthquake before, and we experienced our very first one last Tuesday. We were on the top floor (fourth floor) of an apartment building sitting on the floor eating dinner with a friend, when all of the sudden, we heard a roaring sound and the building started shaking. As we sat there, the shaking intensified. I was frozen in fear. What should we do? Should we stay there? Should we try to run down the stairs and get out? We don’t have earthquakes in Texas! Our friend told us that it was best to stay there, and that if it got really bad we should get inside the door frame, but luckily the shaking stopped about 10 seconds later. My heart was pounding! I never, ever want to move to California!

We learned later that night that it had only been a 5.0 about 60 miles north of where we are living. Unfortunately, it was only about six miles under the surface of the earth, and because of that, there was damage to canals, roads, and houses. On Friday we sent a team out to survey the damage and assess needs. The people who live there are very shaken right now, because they have continued to experience multiple tremors every day since the earthquake. JB and I will go with another team this week to meet with more people and do further assessments. This is a horrible time for them, but it gives us the opportunity to love them, calm them during this time of fear, and offer our help.

Last week was a busy time for us hanging out with local friends that we have made here. The people are so warm and generous, and we have truly loved getting to know them. While there is a lot that we won’t miss here, we will undoubtedly miss the people. We had tea with our national “mother figure” and her daughter down the street Wednesday afternoon, we had a formal local dinner with JB’s friend Wednesday night, I had lunch with a girl friend Thursday, and on Thursday evening the family down the street invited us back to hear them perform their national music for us. They even got us up dancing with them a few times! (JB said that was the first time he had ever been asked by a man to dance! A different culture, for sure, but a nice and innocent way of getting people involved in the local dances.)

Yesterday evening we had dinner with a family that we met a couple weeks ago while out walking. I think I can safely speak for both of us in saying that our favorite times here are when we are spending time with the local people. Though there is a language barrier, we work around it, and we love sharing stories about our different cultures and about our lives.

Speaking of different cultures, today is International Women’s Day, which is a fairly important holiday here. We celebrated Men’s Day several weeks ago, but it is not quite as big of a deal as Women’s Day. I was given fresh carnations for Women’s Day by my young friend last night at dinner, which is remarkable considering that it is nearly impossible to get fresh flowers here. Everything is still covered in snow! We will blog soon about other cultural and lifestyle differences to give everyone an even better picture of what life is like here. Until then, God bless, and we miss y’all!