Well, I did not realize that the last time I checked in was when we had the "big" earthquake! So... we are fine.
Thursday evening we had eaten dinner with teacher friends and had also attended the call-in session for the Girl's high school parent meeting. Our boxes from our trip to Anchorage arrived that afternoon and so we had some new movies to watch. The Mister had put one on the tv and I promptly drifted off to sleep. At about 9:30 he woke me up because the village leaders were on the radio saying that an earthquake had hit Japan. We scurried around gathering things for a tub and then they announced that we were evacuating. The 4 teachers from Perryville plus the Boy plus the 3 itenerant teachers who were here loaded into the truck with the head teacher's Chow and about 4 or 5 Rubbermaid tubs and all our winter gear. We drove up the hill to the shelter and then sat there and watched the rest of the village follow us. I stayed in the truck for a while but eventually the need for a restroom overcame that option and I moved inside. There were cots and blankets and some mattresses. We sat in folding chairs and the Boy took a cot. We waited until 3:00 when they had told us they thought the waves would hit. Everybody was really nice. We sat around and talked. Then we waited for the all-clear. Finally, about 5:30, we packed up and went home. At 8:00, our head-teacher called and said we would in fact have school. At 9:00 (regular start time) we had 3 kids and 3 teachers and 1 aide. We are all tired but it was a good morning. We got to do some individual things with the boys and then we had lunch. It's a short day today, they went home at 2:30.
It was an interesting night. Did you ever play that game --- what would take with you if....? It was no fun last night. What would we need if the waves did wash out the village? We ended up packing a Rubbermaid tote with underwear, tee-shirts, a couple of towels, some peanut butter crackers, peanuts, 3 small jugs of water, medicines, computer, nook, kindle, phone, charge cords, passports, checkbook, social security cards. It filled up fast. I got to the shelter without a hat or gloves. Although it is March and our temps are warmer, I was dressed in a tee-shirt and jeans. We did have our snow pants and coats. It was cold and we should have been better dressed.
I didn't take my camera. We did take toothbrushes and paste.
We have spent time today talking about next time. We know there will be a next time. Hopefully, it won't be soon. It wasn't bad last night but if we had need to stay another night or more --- it was going to get bad really quick. We will definitely work on being better prepared.
The Girl slept through the whole thing. They did not evacuate the city she is in. Apparently the drawback does happen there but the actual waves don't come in because of the surrounding islands.
We are counting down the days until summer vacation.
