One year ago
One year ago today I was in the middle of the Sichuan province watching people run screaming from their apartments. A few hours later, I was trying to get downtown to find my friends as cell phones had shut off and the streets were crowded by people leaving the city in droves while even more stood in the streets, scared to go back inside. The expat bar had no electricty but was still serving spagetti and cold beer while we gathered in the beer garden as our home away from home. Hours after that, I was back home in my bed still without cell phones but with internet, messaging friends every time we felt an aftershock.
We messaged about aftershocks for days. I think eventually you could feel the earth move even if it didn't, just because a moving earth started to make more sense. As though, suddenly, land that stood still was unexpected and confusing. The first week was the worst. By two weeks after people had (mostly) moved back into their homes, buses were running again and taxis could be found. It was almost a month before most of the evacuated population of the city came back. But by then, I was heading out.
I wrote a long (albeit overly dramatic) update about the earthquake for Zoo Atlanta which (upon googling) I see has been taken off the site. Not because of me, they just clean up their site from time to time. But ah, it's lost to history and a few comments on San Diego Zoo's panda news.
Such is time, such is life. We move memories to make way for new experiences, rarely stopping to question if that was a memory that should have been kept.
So, here's me maintaining that memory for another year with some photos that have already been posted on this blog.
From Chengdu
The street, two weeks after their major earthquake with the last few still scared to go home.
And me a few months before in a village that now lives in rubble in the valley of the mountain I was about to hike.
From Wolong
We messaged about aftershocks for days. I think eventually you could feel the earth move even if it didn't, just because a moving earth started to make more sense. As though, suddenly, land that stood still was unexpected and confusing. The first week was the worst. By two weeks after people had (mostly) moved back into their homes, buses were running again and taxis could be found. It was almost a month before most of the evacuated population of the city came back. But by then, I was heading out.
I wrote a long (albeit overly dramatic) update about the earthquake for Zoo Atlanta which (upon googling) I see has been taken off the site. Not because of me, they just clean up their site from time to time. But ah, it's lost to history and a few comments on San Diego Zoo's panda news.
Such is time, such is life. We move memories to make way for new experiences, rarely stopping to question if that was a memory that should have been kept.
So, here's me maintaining that memory for another year with some photos that have already been posted on this blog.
From Chengdu
The street, two weeks after their major earthquake with the last few still scared to go home.
And me a few months before in a village that now lives in rubble in the valley of the mountain I was about to hike.
From Wolong