Grab the Go Barrel!

(From August 31, 2013)

Today was a fairly typical Nepali day... given that everyday in Nepal is filled with things I don't quite understand or anticipate.

I woke up at 6am, had my first cup of black tea, and did some morning yoga. Then I took a shower in cold, cold water. (I'm not sure what I will do in December!) at 8:30am I ate breakfast and then left for school. It is approximately one kilometer from my house to school so my day begins with a pleasant walk.

It was not a regular school day (I'm beginning to wonder if a regular school day even exists), but it was the day when students come to receive the results of their first term exams. So there weren't any classes. I spent my morning preparing some introduction cards about myself to use with students when I start teaching next week. I also spent time getting to know some of the other primary school teachers.

After school, I came back to the house, took a nap, read, studied some Nepali letters, and worked on creating a rubric to measure English language proficiency. Then of course there was evening rice and time with the whole family; in the evening they often band together in a concerted effort to improve my Nepali. Some of the sounds in this language just don't seem possible for me!

At 10:00 I headed to bed, and by 10:30 I was fast asleep.

At approximately 11:30pm I slept through my first Nepali earthquake. The shaking we felt in Kathmandu (and by we I mean everyone else who woke up) was a result of a 5.1 magnitude quake with its epicenter in Xinjiang, China. My family described it as "such a big one!" and "it just kept shaking and I was like 'let it stop!'" There was the initial quake and one aftershock; I slept through both of them.

At 11:32pm, my family came and woke me up and we all headed outside. It seemed like everyone in the area was awake. Dogs were barking and lights were on in lots of houses. We waited outside for awhile, but the excitement seemed to die down so we moved back inside out of the cold night air. We spent another 20 minutes or so waiting in the living room to see if there would be more aftershocks, but didn't feel anything. The whole time, my family made light-hearted jokes about being hungry and wanting to pull out the "go barrel." The giant blue bucket is still humorous, but it does take on a more serious note when you are pulled out of bed in the middle of the night. It was nice to know that if I needed it, I had everything important all in one place, ready go... even if "go" means me rolling the barrel on the ground in front of me!

So now it's 12:26am. Everyone is back in their own beds and I assume everyone else is sleeping. I'm pretty unaccustomed to earthquakes and even though I didn't feel it, the whole event was a lot of sudden excitement, so I'm not sure how quickly I'll fall asleep after I finish writing this.

But all is well. I am safe. The house is still standing. The go barrel is still locked and in its place. The next time I'll try to be awake so that I can give a better account :)