Keep on rolling...

Yeah, so, earthquake. I was trying to figure out how to do this last night, but failed dismally -- I guess I just needed "sunshine" to do it.

I've got sort of a weird perspective of what happened at the moment. When the earthquake began, I had just sat down to coffee with a couple of other teachers from my school in Yulin. Schwanky place. I was arguing with the waiter about the health of drinking cold water with hot tea. It started shaking, but the place had wood floors -- we thought somebody was running or dancing or something. Not so much.

The teachers grabbed my Midwestern butt and drug me outside before I had a real notion of what was happening. I'm from Michigan, we don't get earthquakes. It's something we watch on TV when California's having problems. We stood outside across the street, watching in awe as the buildings shook. One of the teachers pulled her car up, and I blinked, then realized that my wallet and phone were conveniently located on the table on the second floor of the coffee shop. Yes, m'dears, I am the idiot who ran back INSIDE the building during an earthquake.

Wallet recovered, we jumped in the car and drove off before anyone had really processed what had happened. Everybody had just poured out of the buildings and was just starting to congregate outside. We saw the uniformed employees of one place marching 2x2 down the street, arm in arm. A little dog was standing in an intersection looking for mummy or daddy, and waiting for the cars while he crossed. We were trying to call our families and friends, but the phones wouldn't even register our calls. The teachers turned their phones off, and then on again, and then told me they were on emergency only. There weren't a lot of people on the road yet, luckily, as the teachers dropped me off at my university.

I had these visions of Dan in this old apartment with the ceiling having caved in on him, and I was close to panicked -- I wanted to make sure he was still in one piece. I retrieved my bike, and the shifu didn't even look twice at me. Usually we have some sort of strained, badly pronounced conversation.

And then I proceeded to try to ride my bike from Xinan Minzu to Sichuan University. It's basically from the west side of the south section to the east side of the south section, so a considerable distance, but it usually takes me about 20 minutes. Think of it this way: it's a 10 kuai cab ride.

That was a nightmare. Everyone had rushed out of the buildings and was milling around in the middle of the road. Middle, meaning center; they were hanging out on the bushes and the center dividers, and when they ran out of space, they spilled onto the road. Cars were stopped or inching along in that way that makes people think they'll actually get somewhere if they're a jerk about it. And there's a single line of bikes weaving through traffic, sometimes two wide, mostly just one, because people were crowded in the bike lanes and the sidewalks. I never really realized how many people were in Chengdu until then.

My normally 20 minute ride took me an hour and a half. I arrived at the apartment and ran up to the bike lady, hoping she'd understand my putonghua/sichuanhua mix and said,"Have you seen my boyfriend today?" "Yeah, he's downstairs, he's okay."

He was not downstairs, the dork. I saw the windows opened and yelled up to them, and he poked his head out of the 7th floor apartment.

From then on, I've been hanging out with him as he's achieved international fame. As I was trying to weave my way across the city to make sure he wasn't dead or dying, he'd been sitting online blogging, the only blogger out of Chengdu who was posting in English.

Either way. Peng Laoshi was trying to get ahold of me that night, and kept calling but wouldn't get off her phone so I could call her back. So at 11 oclock at night, dressed in a long skirt, I grabbed my bike and rode down to Peace Corps HQ. I was expecting to only tell the guard that I was okay and tell him to tell her, but to my surprise, most of the staff was camped out in their cars right outside the building. Everybody was relieved to see me, and I ended up talking with Peng Laoshi for a while before meandering back home.

Almost nobody was staying at home. Apartments were dark. But there were thousands of people wandering around on Sichuan University's campus that night, camping out in tents, stretched out on the ground in blankets, waiting in interminable lines for the bathrooms.

I finally got ahold of my students last night. They're safe, but camping out just like everybody else, poor guys. They said,"We're very lucky we have someplace to stay tonight. We're staying on the playground." O.O In the pouring rain. Ugh. If I could put 120 people up in my apartment, I would. Classes were canceled yesterday and today. They said maybe tomorrow too.

All in all, I've been very lucky. The aftershocks are still shaking a little, and I was definitely very frightened. But I'm safe, Dan's safe, my friends are all safe, and all we broke was a glass. But since it was pouring rain yesterday, relief for the people who are hurt in Wenchuan is long in coming, and I read yesterday may have to be dropped in by airplane. So please, while my experiences might have been mindblowing but relatively mild, keep those who really suffered in your hearts, and send good vibes. Donations can be made to the Red Cross.