Monday 13th September

Well we made it thru Day 8. I've turned all superstitious (like a certain friend that thinks she is going to die at 43) and I wasn't counting on surviving the earthquake until after Day 8 (because that is when Haiti had another Big One)... so now I am official alive and living on borrowed time. Good on me!

I started back teaching at school today. Period 1 was okay. I've got Yr 10 kids which are an earthquake in themselves so we didn't notice any aftershocks (apparently there was one or two). I made it thru the hour and was super greatful that I don't see them again until Thursday (I mean, I love them but, heck they are WORK). Period 2 I had a non-contact period where I listened to the other teachers freak out about their destroyed houses and how insurance companies are going to try to avoid paying (blah blah, what will be will be). Period 3 I had to teach via Video Conference to students around the country. Only... the audio cables in the back of the TV screen were snapped off. It seems they are what stopped the unit from crashing to the ground. They were stretched so tight that the little gold wires insider the plastic were longer than the plastic casing. It is hard to explain. So that lesson was cancelled... Poor kids, they are now going to be 7 periods behind the rest of the country (that were not in the quake zone). My last 2 periods of the day were... interesting. We had a few aftershocks and the kids were nervous. Actually, the girls were nervous and upset. Every aftershock had a few of them near tears. It didn't help that my classroom is in what i am *convinced* was once some sort of metal container. It now has glass sliding doors, a couple of windows and carpeting... but it is just a metal box on piles. NICE... this means it shakes when the boys come romping in every period and when you have actual aftershocks it moves. In the one big one I said to the kids "really? do you think it is an aftershock? yer, probably is... so, what would you like to do? Get under the desk, or shall we wait and see if it stops soon? Personally I'm okay with just waiting it out... but if you want to go under the desks then go for it" and by that time it was pretty much over (except for the swaying) and they stayed where they were. I mean seriously, we can't be going under the desk for every little aftershock. We will get nothing done and every five minutes I will have boys screaming "earthquake!" and disrupting class by insisting we all go under the desks. No, my policy is to keep reassuring them that our little tin can will just shake a bit (aftershock right now) but nothing bad will happen. We are much safer there than in the "bunker" (main building - which was a mental hospital before it was rented out as a school building... and is really like a concrete bunker with no windows). So yer, tears, quakes, and lots of talking about what happened at their houses. One girl fainted when the earthquake happened. Lots of others lept out of bed and narrowly avoided being squished by 6ft bookcases. Because of their religion (I am at a private school just for Exclusive Brethren children, otherwise known as les freres plymouth) they seemed very fatalistic about it all. If you die, you are dead. Nothing. Lights out. It's all over. (no reunion with God is seems??) and these things can happen at any time so there is no real reason to panic or live in dread... This is a more peaceful mindset than what I imagined they might have.

In any case, I had made a powerpoint about the earthquake (showing the different buildings and structures in town that were damaged so they learned all kinds of "en ville" vocabulary) and also another about how to have a 72 hour kit. Of course here I made a major faux pas. NO ONE IN ANY CLASS knew what a 72 hour kit was... and at one point I said "sheesh, how do you not know what a 72 hour kit is? Don't you watch TV or something??? Ummm, ooops. Sorry. You really don't watch TV. Okay, let's start at teh beginning...." and we went from there. DUMB! I should have thought this thru a little more before I asked if they were Quake Safe.

As for me, I felt unsettled most of the day. I didn't want to go out to school as it felt really far from the rest of the family, and if anything happened it would take me a good 24 hours to hike all the way back into town. But my kids are well drilled on what to do, so I knew they would be okay. It was hard to focus and get back into teaching/learning/assessment mode because the last teaching period seems so long away. Like MONTHS ago. The kids felt the same. By the end of the day I felt desperate to get back to my own children and make sure they were okay, and give them hundreds of kisses. I am not scared of the actual quakes, but I think deep down I must be very aware of how easily it can be to be seperated (permenantly) from your family, but something than can strike with no warning... and that is totally out of everyone's control.
However, you can't live your like thinking that you might fall under a bus, or an earthquake might strike, or the ring of volcanoes around your city might decide to burst forth, or a tsunami might drown you. Que sera, sera.

So I came home, got the kids and took them to the supermarket so we could make their favourite dinner (chicken tacos). And no, not because it might be The Last Supper, but because they love it and I like it when they are happy! We took dinner down to Dad and the boys at the fire station. I love living 2 minutes from Dad's work :)