and my world was rocked...

well, the world knows what happened here today...but i'm going to begin with something more positive.

yesterday was laura's birthday. she turned the ripe old age of 20 and to celebrate, John and i began our day at the chilean version of the DMV. for about three hours. however, our chilean IDs will now be ready to be picked up, although after today i am not sure when they'll be ready. so anyways, after that we met laura and ellie at a mercado at los dominicos. this mercado was sooooo nice. and very expensive. there were tons of different pieces of lapis lazuli jewelry that at some point i'm going to splurge on as my gift from here because the bracelets are so beautiful and so different from anything i can get at home. after drooling over things we couldn't afford, we went and purchased tickets for our vina del mar trip for the weekend(which we had finally ironed out some of the details for) as well as bus tickets to mendoza, argentina for the next weekend. next, we walked around the las condes mall to again drool over things we couldn't afford and then headed off to la casa de laura for her birthday asado (remember i taught you this means bbq..haha). the bbq was...well a bit awkward at first but after a little bit we all got comfortable with each other and it was a really good time. We got to eat more choripan, home made guac and salsa, and yummy potato salad. then i helped laura's host mom light 20 candles for her birthday cake (nearly lighting my arm on fire in the process) and we enjoyed some yummy raspberry almond torta thingy. deeeelish.

normally at this point in a birthday evening, you would head out on ze town and discoteca it up. since we all had to get up at 7am though, we decided we'd hold off until tomorrow when we are vina. this turned out to be one of many accidentally lucky decisions.

so john and i got home around 1 and i went straight to bed so i'd be semi fresh for a day of vina fun the next day. mid sleep, however, i was just JOLTED awake. i'm not sure i can explain the feeling of being completely peacefully asleep and then wake up to everything around you moving. and it's not just shaking. it feels like the whole world is shifting. i think in my head i assessed that it wasn't too awful-my stuff wasn't falling all over the place and the walls weren't cracking so i pushed the doors of my wardrobe closed because the noise of them slamming back and forth was adding to the scariness of it all. this went on for about a minute and a half. when it was over my legs were shaking, although at the time i didn't register fear just mostly confusion. i immediately put my robe on and went downstairs to find everyone else huddled in the living room, pretty shaken. at this point, we had no electricity so no tv or internet. we stayed up for an hour or so until the aftershocks slowed and calmed and then i went back upstairs. we had no idea that we had just experienced tremors from an 8.8 earthquake. i wasn't even sure that anyone outside of chile would know that we experienced a tremor. wrooooong.

that morning i woke up at 7 to get ready for vina. since i thought it was just a minor santiago tremor, i went ahead and showered (in the dark). then i got a message from laura saying that homes in vina were partially destroyed...uh oh. this was clearly more than just a little tremor. luckily, at 7:30 our electricity came on and John, Santiago (the night watchman), and I watched the news to find out there had been an 8.8 earthquake 200 miles away from us...a much greater magnitude than what hit Haiti, though luckily it was farther off the coast and Chilean construction is much better. at this point i was really scared for a couple reasons. 1) my parents are going to FREAK out 2)are all my friends safe? I had friends in vina, pucon, and actually in transit at the time of the earthquake. luckily, everyone is safe and i was able to communicate with parents even though my phone company was down and wouldn't allow me to make calls. it was a long day of stressing out about everyone's safety...a feeling i've never had before, at least not associated with a natural disaster.

so...the lucky decisions we made were: 1)deciding to go to vina on saturday instead of friday. had we been there on friday would have been stuck there away from communication and where there seemed to be a lot more chaos. 2) not going out friday night. the most dangerous places to be were roads and bridges, which collapsed even in santiago. had we been out we could have been on the roads. my neighborhood in santiago is fairly new and therefore there wasn't much damage...when i walked outside there were smashed roof tiles and street lamps but nothing major. there were also people sitting outside of large apartment buildings, afraid the aftershocks would cause more damage to the buildings. unlike what the news may say, the entirety of chile is not in disrepair. however, there are SO many people here, especially near the epicenter, without homes, electricity, or running water. roads are closed, hospitals evacuated. so help out if you can.

overall though, i'm really okay. it was a long, stressful day and my thoughts go out to the families with missing or lost loved ones. i really hope this doesn't sound super melodramatic because i was here in safety today, and i really appreciate the messages i received from everyone. loves, steph.