First Tremor

Today my Japanese teacher came over to the house for our twice weekly lessons and Conor was crawling all over me, demanding the pen and wanting to write all over my Nihon-go book.  Typical  toddler insanity, hardly an environment for learning, especially now that the language lessons are getting more difficult and I need every brain cell possible to remember all the conjugation forms. So I sent the kids packing to the park, stat. I could hear Conor screaming all the way down the driveway. Joy. Now, all peace and quiet as we dig into our books again, seated in the dining room.  A few second later we heard some rumbling upstairs. Odd,  I thought to myself, the kids aren't upstairs. I could have sworn they left. Then the china cabinet housing about 40 thousand (seldom used) wine glasses started to rattle. I looked at my sensei and asked, "Earthquake?" She nodded, "I think so." More rattling.  She motioned, "Let's get under the dining table, it could get worse" Yikes! So, there we were, huddled under that huge 8 foot slab of rosewood (which sensei noted later was very good for earthquake, which was not what I was thinking when I purchased it from Holly Hunt). So in that panicked moment (in reality 15 seconds, but thoughts fly quick when you are huddled in fetal position) I thought, Am I going to die right here under a table while learning the TA form of  TO SWIM (Oyoida, btw)? And where are the kids? Are they safe? It turns of course that while you are walking outside, one of course doesn't even feel a tremor of this size, but, believe me, I felt this one. So when it was all over, the sensei went right back to verbs, and I was sitting there, a little dazed. Hello, I just felt an EARTHQUAKE. I guess these things are not that uncommon, we do live on an island surrounded by volcanoes after all. Better pack my earthquake bag like a good mommy/citizen.