quaking earth...run away

in the pics: well, I already deleted the pics, and blogger only uploaded 2 of the 5 pics...that sucks. One of my students, and "how the road widens" a piece of development?? I guess next is a tar layer? I checked pics on my flash drive = le se mea (there are no pics of the tsunami damage in my village), of which only a deck going out into the ocean got washed, and a few rocks on the road. We were very luckyyyyyy.

9/29
Today’s newsflash-or should I say rumble…earthquake—a pretty big one (my mom tells me later it was an 8.5 shocker and I see on the TV that the center wasn’t too far south of Western Samoa.) walking back to my school during my morning walk I feel the earth start to shake…a sensation from down deep in the earth somewhere. It kind of felt like having too much to drink. Everything shook—a slow shake. Not strong enough to lose my balance. This is the biggest on I have felt. I met the mayor of the village; he told me it was the biggest one he’s ever felt. He speaks pretty good English. I saw some small waves approaching as I was walking back to my school. So I walked faster to my room, and checked my cell phone. There was a message saying find higher ground. I grabbed my emergency stuff and my backpack and was gone walking up the hill—run away run away. I appreciate the phone calls I received—three from PC staff making sure I was on higher ground and was OK. Five friends also called to make sure I was OK.

So here I sit in front of a shop—a very busy shop—for the last three hours. Shops are a very busy place, especially the John Pasina shop, well, at least for places “at the back” in tua, away from the town area—the country. Watching the people and cars. There are some NICE cars (meaning new Toyota trucks for the most part). After being in Samoa (especially Apia), one would think all white vehicles are taxis. NOT TRUE! I saw two white cars pull up to the shop today that didn’t have a taxi sign on top of them. Now the text message—tsunami cancelled…time to go. Then my friend calls and says Coconuts Resort (where our PC group recently had our Close of Service) is no more, destroyed, washed out to sea. I think that whole stretch of beach had a good smashing by the waves because I heard that 2 or 3 other resorts were also taken out by the Tsunami. I saw pictures on TV of palagis (tourists) standing near some rubble. That made me think of how lucky my area was, I mean to not be hit harder by the tsunami. It could have been a lot worse. The water did not come over the sea wall at my school or my Samoan family’s house. the Southeast side of the island Upolu was hit the hardest. That seems kind of weird when I saw the angle of the waves on the map on TV. It would have hit us first before it hit the southeast side of the island. But the waves we got seemed to be the crumbs. I heard that some waves reached 20 feet, but I’m not sure if that was in Western Samoa or American Samoa. I know in AS there was extensive damage—to the village of PagoPago—right in the harbor.

Tonight—reports on TV—some people dead, many injured. Tourists lose their vacations (or at least the vaca they imagined). No one is dead in my village, but I hear a fire truck crashed coming down a road too fast and one person died.

Taeao analela—this afternoon.

Then I hear no school for the rest of the week. no school for just today. I don’t know what to believe.