In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

Monday morning 21st of January 2019. I'm in a deep sleep. Around 5:30 in the morning I wake up confused. I didn't wake up in a gentle way. My mind takes a few seconds to make sense of the situation. My alarmclock isn't ringing, so that isn't what woke me up; But then what is this repetitive irritating noise? I remember this is my free day, I remember working until late at night at my blog and I remember planning on sleeping until the sun has set already several hours. I look at my cell phone again to check it is not my alarmclock which is ringing. It is not. I see that it is not yet 6 o'clock in the morning; the one responsible for getting me out of my sleep on my free day will get a serious angry look from me. I still feel very tired and confused. It's like I'm dizzy, but not really, it feels like everything around me is moving a little bit, it feels like my bed is a small boat and waves are hitting my little ship from all sides. Suddenly Giovanni starts making a lot of noise and starts screaming my name and that I have to wake up. I want to tell him in a grumpy way to leave me alone but before I get the chance to open my mouth he storms out the room and I hear him screaming 'temblor, hay temblor'. 

Now to place this into context, you need to know I find it very difficult to wake up everyday early at 5:45. Most days I arrive a little late. When I get down it is more often 6:10 or 6:15 than it is the actual 6:00 it should be. Giovanni is worse than I am, normally I am always the first of us to be ready. So him being awake and storming out full of energy before 6 is incredibly weird to me and only adds to the confused state of mind I find myself in. 

My marvelously slow mind finally starts connecting the dots. If my Spanish is not failing me, I remember temblor is a synonym for terremoto, or thus earthquake. It feels like everything is moving because everything is moving. The irritating loud sound is an alarmsystem trying to warn everyone to leave their houses. My mind is not yet there completely but my body starts acting suddenly very fast on automatic pilote. In a few seconds I have put on some cloths and my legs are carrying me as fast as they can downwards. I see a lot of our children are already sitting outside. I run to the dormitory of the smallest children where one of the sisters puts the last child still asleep in my arms. At that time the ground beneath our feet stops trembling, the world has stopped shaking. At this moment I really come to my senses and start realizing this was an earthquake and this was potentially very dangerous. I notice nothing seems damaged and nobody seems hurt, I start hoping there was no-one less lucky during this earthquake. 

Afterwards I learned this was actually a very light earthquake. It originated at the coast of Oaxaca with a magnitude of 5,8. If you get hit by a 5,8 earthquake you will get shaken quiet strongly. But Tuxtla was luckely already pretty far from the point of origin. So we only received a very dimmed version of the 5,8.

I'm glad we only got the gentle version of the earthquake. This experience was already frightening enough for me, I do not need to feel the real thing. I'm glad we can just keep doing what we do best in here: shake the world very gently. 

B. Supertramp