Oh, what trials and tribulations we go through in life... Today has been an exceptionally trialsome day for us. But alas, I have happy tidings to end our fiascos.
Hannah got home last night. Say hi Hannah. (HI!) As I prepared for her arrival yesterday afternoon, we lost eletricity (not really a common occurance.) so I was bustling around getting things ready for her. I was hoping she wouldn't have to unpack in the dark because we are very short on candles.
(Speaking of candles, thank you so much Aunt Barb for the adorble little candles. They smell soooo good!)
Anyway, fortunately about 15 minutes before she got home, the lights came back on! Yay! In case you were wondering, that was not one of the aforementioned trials.
The trial happened at about 11:00 pm in the form of an.... wait for it... EARTHQUAKE! It's kind of funny because in the past month that I've been here alone, I felt 2 other earthquakes while at home. They are fairly small, but definitely shaky. The longest one, before last night, lasted about 20 seconds. Anyway, I've been telling Hannah about it, but she didn't seem too concerned, so I said just wait... you will see what I mean. (It's getting to where I expect them now.) So her first night back, we get the biggest one yet.
-It was 4.8 mag.
-On the Peru/Ecuador border (quite close to us now), epicenter 21 miles underground, 80 miles SE from Cuenca.
A real-life reenactment of the event will be posted shortly. For now, an interesting website that we now have on speed dial is http://www.iris.edu/ to keep up to date with our earthquakes.
Hannah was lying in bed at the time and started "shaking violently" in confusion. Haha, JK. ....But seriously...
I was sitting up in bed on my computer and my room started shaking and all my shelves rattled. Hannah came running into my room. "What do we do?! What do we do!? (said in Oh Brother Where Art Though fashion). OK, not really.
We discussed how much we do not like being on the 4th floor of this delapidated concrete building.
Ok, so that was fun. On to our real tribulation... the INTERNET!
Here, nothing is very reliable, especially internet. We (I) have lost a lot of school time because the internet was down for 5 days before the techs came to fix it. Then, for some reason, trying to get Hannah back on the wifi messed everything up again and we lost connection again last night. After spending an hour on the phone this morning with the Internet folks, they said they would charge us for coming out again. In a last stitch effort, we shut everything down (for the thousandth) time, but in a very special custom-designed sequence, and tried to reboot the system into compliance. Fortunately, I discovered a tiny little hole in the wifi router and decided it must be a reset button. One paper clip push later, the whole shabang was working like a charm! FORTUNATELY! It's been such a hassle, we can't believe it's actually working now. We rock!
So anywho... we are working on our survivor kit here. And I guess we better get working on reports now. We have until October 10th to graduate before paying for an extension. It will be close, but all hope is not lost yet!
7 comments:
Hi Girls,
Glad you made it home safely Hannah. Hope first class wasn't too rough :) Great McGiver maneuver on the router, Elsie. Yes, you rock! We're praying for your success in finishing on time, so press the battle to the gate!
Smooches!
Auntie Barb
Wow. I grew up rockin and rollin during earthquakes.
BUT. I have NO patience for things like figuring out what's wrong with the internet. I'm impressed.
The 4th floor of a building of which I know nothing about it's building standards does scare me a bit.
I'm glad you are ok.
Thanks for the public thanks! Your still welcome to come more....
By the way, I felt no such earthquake.... Are you sure your not making these quakes up?
Hi girls, glad all worked out and that you both are together and safe. I read a recent article on earthquake safety (wish I had saved it on computer to send it) however I'll try to summerize, a professional person don't remember his name who went to many earthquake recovery missions wrote this article and noticed after the earthquakes who survived. In a school the students were told to get in the asile of their seats and curl up (as we were all taught to do in earthquake heaven in Calif.) and all died. The beams fall in triangles all over, which put them in the line of fire and were hit by them. The best thing to do according to article is to be like in frond of the desks and curl up in the fetal position, all would have lived. That said, at home the best place to be is in front of heavy furniture and curl up in fetal position. If in bed roll of and curl up. If you have tome go outside.(This is also something we were told not to do). New info had very science that seemes much more reasonable. You know me can't remember the scientific explanation. When outside lookout for trees, and falling structures, go to open area. Hope this helps. Sorry Elsie I havn't written sooner but been busy with Grandmother. She went to hospital with what we thought was UTI but turned out to be bad Virus. Jehovah worked out a way to help me get her into an assisted living facility and are still going through 26yrs of a 2-bedrm apt to a studio apt. at facility. She is havig a struggle accepting or is it eccepting it but it is getting better and she is trying to cooperate, for my sake she says. Had a good day with her yesterday. Hope WiFi keeps working will keep you in my prayers as always. So proud of what you are doing especially in these difficult times. Love and miss you. Aunt Cookie
hi girls,
Glad you made it back in one peace hannah, glad your both ok, specialy after your quakes. Hope everything works out for you both. Talk to you soon, take care.
Interesting to see how many earthquakes are happening. Within 24 hours of this one, there was a 6.8 in Alaska, a 6.7 in Argentina; and within 48 hours, a 7.0 near Vanatu.
While the cinder block construction isn't very comforting, hopefully you're on the top floor. You really should have an emergency kit... here's a relatively inexpensive option for food (10 days per person that will keep for up to 25-30 years): Shelf Reliance THRIVE Starter Variety Pack, though I'm not sure how you would have it delivered to you.
Good work on the internet connection. :-)
So glad everything worked out in the end.
Post a Comment