Last night at about 11.15 we were awoken by a telephone call from one of our Chinese friends. She was frantically trying to tell me something but I couldn't quite understand. Then her husband who could speak a little English came on the line and said "another very strong earthquake, maybe soon, get out of the building!". And so it was the same procedure again of grabbing Tabitha and getting down 12 flights of stairs as quickly as we could.
When we got down to the ground floor there were loads of people leaving the building with bedding and food. After asking around a bit I discovered that there had been a warning on the TV that in the next 48 hours there could be another earthquake as serious as the last one but closer to where we are. We were left thinking what will we do? In the end I decided to go and get some essentials from our apartment as well as warn some other friends in our building.
After doing all this we headed to Aaron and Lois's apartment (who are out of town at the moment, but their appartment is nearest to the ground) and about a dozen of us kipped on the floor.
After a pretty rotten night's sleep we are both feeling pretty fed up, wondering if this is ever going to end. The uncertainty that is accompanying all of these rumours just hangs over everything that we do, it is really hard to get into any type of daily routine. Chances are that this warning is a load of rubbish, but at the same time we would be stupid not to heed warnings that come from experts. We shoudn't complain too much, there are hundreds of thousands of people in worse situations than us, we are still really thankful for what we have, things could have been a lot worse for us. Our prayers go up for those who lost loved ones in the much worse hit areas.
There were thousands of people sleeping at the side of the roads and in parks last night. Nobody seems to be wanting to take any chances. The Chinese people are all really spooked and it seems as though this is also the case in other cities. I took a few pictures last night of the scenes on the streets:
More Drama
Rumours Abound
It's been nearly 2 days since the first earthquake hit. Apparently there was a aftershock hit Xi'an at around 4am the night after the earthquake, but we were so tired that we didn't notice it.
There are all sorts of rumours going around our city now. One is that our building, which seemed to be one of the worst affected, is going to be condemned because it is not safe to live in. Chances are it's not true, but it's always scary to have something like that in the back of your mind. Especially since we've started using the elevators again since the stairs were destroying our legs.
Another is that the epicentre of the earthquake is shifting towards Xi'an and that it will arrive here in 2 weeks. Apparently this comes from some government sources, but it still sounds ridiculous to me. I always thought earthquakes were a one off thing with some aftershocks, but not something that would be going on for weeks. Maybe I am wrong, and this picture from the US Geological Survey does suggest that there is a definite line pointing here:
One thing for sure is that there is a lot of fear among the Chinese people. We are just trying keep our trust in Him upstairs, and accept whatever happens.
Jen has packed a suitcase of stuff in case the building is condemned and has to be evacuated. We will certainly be more prepared if there are any more episodes.
We also came across another website with pictures and videos of the devastation in Sichuan. Watching the videos, it is amazing to see what other people were doing at the same time we were evacuating. www.china-quake.com
An Earthquake Strikes
As you probably already know, there was an earthquake registering at 7.8 in Sichuan (about 350 miles away from us) province yesterday.
At the time Tabitha was napping while Jenna and I were just doing some language practice when all of a sudden I could feel a rumbling underneath my chair. I was a bit confused and then the water in the fish tank started swaying backwards and forwards, Jenna shouted "get Tabitha". So I ran into Tabitha's room grabbed her and we started down the stairs. We are on the 12th floor and so there was quite a long way to go down. I wasn't sure if the best thing to do was get under a door frame but we just decided to leg it. We didn't even think that it was an earthquake, we just thought there was maybe some structural problem with our building and it was going to collapse.
We were flying down the stairs. Jenna thought I was going to trip myself up and so grabbed Tabitha from me. Heading down the dark stairwells we were being thrown from side to side as the building swayed. About halfway down a man was trying to make us wait, at this point Jenna was praying in tongues and we both thought that we were going to die. We waited for a few seconds but then decided just to go for it. When we finally got to the ground floor there was clouds of dust plooming out of the side of the building.
It was only when we got to the street that we realized that it was probably an earthquake as people were pouring into the middle of the road from all of the other buildings.
We met the other foreigners from our building outside and from there we started trying to figure out exactly what had happened. We soon started hearing rumors of a major earthquake hitting ChengDu, but didn't really have any details. One of the ladies who lives 3 floors below us was just outside our building when it happened. She said she saw it swaying backwards and forwards, and the road was moving beneath her feet.
We waited in the beaming sunshine for about 3 hours before deciding to head back to Aaron and Lois's second floor apartment for dinner. They were great, they cooked for about a dozen of us on short notice, and while we were allowed to go back into our building last night we decided to stay at Aaron and Lois's.
We have just come back this morning. Everything seems to be fine apart from some cracks in the walls.
The outlook isn't so good in other parts of China, however with over 10,000 feared dead. The Chinese government is doing all it can to reach the worst affected areas but are having to contend with roads blocked by landslides. Our thoughts go out to all those who are more seriously affected than us as well as the authorities as they work around the clock trying to rescue people.
Language Progress Update
We have been studying now for just over 7 months, I thought I would write a little update about how far I have got. There are a total of six books in the series we are doing. My class has just finished book 4. After book 4 there is no more grammar to learn, so theoretically I should understand all Chinese grammar. The 5th and 6th books are studied concurrently and we hope to have them done sometime in the beginning of next semester(possibly even earlier, we will have to see how the pace goes). After this we will be looking at other books which should look at social/political issues to increase vocab. The focus of my studies now are practicing building sentences and paragraphs, increasing vocabulary and increasing the number of characters I recognize.
The aim is to understand 7,000 words and 2,500 characters. Currently I know about 2,500 words and 400 characters, so there is still a long way to go, especially with regards to characters.
Don't Fancy Going to Work?
Jenna is now having her Chinese lessons taught privately at our home four evenings a week. She has the same teacher that I had last semester and generally we are really happy with her, she is very friendly and has helped Jenna's confidence in speaking the language to no end. However last week she came up with the mother of all excuses for not wanting to teach, it was something like this:
"I'm sorry Jenna, it is raining and I have only just got back to my apartment, I took my shoes off and my socks are wet, so I don't think I will be able to come to your house and teach today"
I have heard lot's of different excuses but that has got to be by far the best. I can't come to work because my socks are wet!
About the Hospital
When I first hurt my ankle I went straight to the hospital from the football match. To start with I thought that it was broken. I was on my own so when I got out of the Taxi I had to hop to the entrance to the hospital. By the time I got inside my hopping leg was about to collapse so I asked one of the ladies at reception if they had a wheelchair. This was where I encountered my first problem
First they didn't want to give me one because I was on my own and apparently in China it is highly unusual for a person to go to the hospital on their own and so they wanted me to sit down and wait until someone arrived to help me. After I convinced them that I wasn't going to call anyone to come, (the hospital was about 45 mins from anyone I knew) they let me have one, but they wouldn't let me go to the A&E department because they said I needed to pay a 500 yuan (30 pounds) deposit before I could go anywhere. I only had 50 yuan on me because I never like to carry a lot of money out with me because there are a lot of pickpockets. My ankle was still extremely painful at this point and I was getting pretty tired anyway. After some (I would like to say "polite") discussion I managed to convince them that I wasn't going to steal their wheelchair and they pointed me in the direction of the doctor.
When I got to the relevant doctors room. I tried to explain what had happened, but the guy wouldn't even look at me! He just said I had to go back to the place I had come from and pay a registration fee! Another bloke in the Doctors room (the doors are always open and there are usually at least 2 other patients competing with you for the docs attention) very kindly offered to push me back and help with the registration. Another great example of the warmheartedness of ordinary Chinese people.
On my return to the doctor, he just poked my foot a few times and told me I needed an X-Ray, and that it was going to cost 100 yuan. The reason that I had gone to such a far out hospital was because my insurance company told me that they had a relationship with this one and money would not be an issue. When I told the doctor this he had no idea what I was talking about, and they basically told me that I couldn't have an X-Ray, or any other treatment because I didn't have any money!
To cut the rest of this long story short I was able to call Aaron and ask him to bring a load of money, and 2 hours after arriving at the hospital with what I thought may have been a broken ankle I got my x-ray.
I'm glad that this happened to me and not Jenna or Tabs and that it wasn't too urgent. We now know next time when we head to the hospital even if it is a huge emergency to make sure we have a load of cash otherwise they will not even look at us.
It's been a week and a half since I hurt my ankle
It's been pretty frustrating at times, and the crutches we have are really hard work. This morning we went back to the hospital to get my plaster changed. A friend of ours had bought in some elastic ones from England and so I now have one of those on. I'm feeling much better about it now.
Jenna has been nothing short of wonderous this week. She has carried on with school while looking after Tabs at the same time and also doing all my housework jobs. I can't wait to get better and give her a rest :p
Wow Iv'e just scrolled up and realized that was long, sorry if it was boring......
Ouch
On Friday while playing football I collided with another player on my team and injured my ankle. After waiting two hours (more on that later)to get an X-ray in the hospital it turns out that I have injured a tendon in my ankle. My leg is now in plaster and will be for 2-4 weeks....bummer.
This means that a lot falls on Jenna as she now has to do all of the house work that I usually do, as well as look after Tabitha and carry on studying. She has been amazing so far.
I am really struggling to get around, I have some crutches but they are really uncomfortable and so I didn't go to school today. I am really hoping to get back soon. I'm getting restless, sitting on the couch all of the time but it is just so hard to move around. I'm hoping that I just need to get used to using the crutches.
It looks like I will be out of the Football team (we call ourselves "Internazionale Xi'an") for a month or so, but sir Alex doesn't seem too worried he says we have the strength in depth to cope.
