Earthquake!

On 18 November, I went to bed a little earlier than normal out of my pure exaustion of learning spanish. As I tried to fall alseep, my mind began wondering about weird things (as normal). I thought about how strange it is that I have not felt an earthquake yet. Especially when Costa Rica has at least 200 every month and our counrty is the size of New Jersey. I remembered how people said that if you don´t know how to feel one then you might just think it´s a large truck going by (which normally does shake your house some.)

Finally I fell asleep. All of a sudden at 12:10 am on the 19th I awoken to my bed swinging back and forth and slightly jumping up and down. I didn´t exactly know what to think or do. I was wondering "What is going on? What do I do? Do I get up and go downstairs? Is this for real? When is it ever going to stop!?" Finally my bed quit swinging and all was quiet once again. As I layed there motionless I began hearing "¿Todos está bien?" (Is everyone alright?). My family was checking on everyone.

Come to find out in the morning we had a 6.2 earthquake with the epicenter about 130 miles south of us on the Costa Rica-Panama border. There was also another good aftershock, but that one I missed somehow. Thankfully there were no major reports of damage or injuiries! Thank you Jesus.

I always had thought that it would be cool to experiance an earthquake. When I was in Nicaruaga some years back I experianced a very little one. I guess that didn´t do it for me. But now that I have experianced one, I don´t ever want to do that again! There´s somthing very scary about knowing the ground that you think is so sturdy actually moves beneath you. Also the locals say this one was different because normally they are much shorter but harder and more of an intense shaking back and forth instead of the swaying movement that we had.

I have checked "to feel an earthquake" off my list and am not ready to re-experiance that again. But I do live in Costa Rica and there are at least 200 of them a month...so we´ll see what happens. I have also learned not to think about earthquakes before going to bed! :)