The Best Night EVER!

First, let me apologize to all my readers (although few you may be) about my hiatus from the blog! Life here has fallen into a rather dull pattern and I guess since nothing seems all that “exotic” to me anymore, it was hard to motivate myself to update you guys. However, a week ago, my life received a jolt (quite literally) so I took it as a sign to give you guys a shout-out!

Last Wednesday my work sent me to a three day course over risk assessment, planning and disaster preparation. Overall the course was terribly boring: they went go on and on about the same topics and read straight off of power-point slides because as everyone in Ecuador seems to know, that that’s the best method of teaching. Suffice to say, the workshop was a total bore, but things got a little more interesting on Thursday.

That day they taught about ‘emergency action plans’ and what to do in the event of a natural disaster. It was pretty basic stuff, but I have to say that I did learn a few things. And it seemed especially useful that night when I had the chance to put all my newly-learned info into practice. You might ask, put what into practice? The answer to that would be how to act during an earthquake.

Yes, we got struck by a little earthquake in Riobamba. They were actually just tremors, but to me, at 11:00 at night, it all felt the same. I was sleeping when my house started shaking back and forth (it was really only 4 shakes) which jolted me from sleep. I instantly grabbed my cell and ran to my kitchen doorway and huddled there for over an hour, calling my friends in the area and acting totally freaked out. Maybe people from California think that little tremors like that are not big deals, but I’m from Beaumont, Texas, where you only feel the ground shake at monster truck rallies. I had a really hard time getting back to sleep thanks to the adrenaline and the scared-out-of-my-mindness, but eventually dosed off again after making my peace with God.

The next day I found out that it really wasn’t that big of an event. All my coworkers and the people at the course didn’t seem to think it was that big of a problem since no one died and no buildings were knocked down. I’ve also finally accepted that I live in an earthquake zone and might have to deal with a few more tremors before I return to the States. At least now I know that my instant reaction is the right one!