Earthquakes, tsunamis and fires... OH MY!

     For starters, I want to explain that there are over 200 earthquakes each week in Chile. Today, April 16th, there were 36 earthquakes. Most of these earthquakes are so small people can't feel them or they are offshore. In Santiago, I have felt four earthquakes and I have been here for 2.5 months... that just shows how rare it is to feel them and how they are spread out through the country! Whenever there is a shaking, I get asked if I felt it and honestly over half the time I don't feel them. People also ask if I get scared whenever there is some shaking, I mean I can't say it's fun but when things don't fall off the shelves, I don't get too scared. If they are small, people call them "templors", as in shaking of the land. Once an earthquake passes 6 on the Richter scale, it is called an earthquake, "terremoto" and below 6 is a templor. The biggest one I have felt was about 5.6. Earthquakes/templors in Chile are part of the culture. There is even a drink named the "Terremoto" (earthquake in Spanish).

    Two weeks ago there were two earthquakes in a couple towns in the north of Chile. They were big enough to get international news coverage; my family in Vermont and Colorado saw it online! They were two days apart, in the same area, and ranked as an 8.2 and a 7.7. I have two exchange student friends that are living in Caldera, a small coastal town in the desert two hours by plane from Santiago. They couldn't feel the earthquakes in Caldera because it's pretty far from where the earthquakes were but they were evacuated at night due to tsunami warnings. Then, they came home the next day only to be evacuated AGAIN because of the other earthquake that could have also caused a tsunami. My two friends were very shaken up from the whole experience but everyone is okay and a tsunami never came, yet the whole coast of Chile had been evacuated just in case. The earthquakes caused a lot of damage in those couple of towns where the earthquake had been.

    Fuego. Two nights ago, a huge fire started in the beautiful port city, Valparaiso, 70 miles from Santiago. (The cool kids here call it "Valpo"). More than 10,000 people were evacuated (now are without homes) and 12 were killed in the fire. On the same night, the National Fútbol Championship was being played but that got ignored by the whole country because the safety of Valparaiso's people was a priority to watch on TV and to talk about in conversation. It's very sad to see coverage of the damage, especially because I visited the city. Here a news link if you would like to read/learn more about the situation: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-27007884 (copy and paste it). 

    This weekend is Easter weekend (Pascua de Resurrección). In Chile, and I think in most South American countries, Easter is a big celebration. For instance, schools are closed on Friday and businesses, even supermarkets, are closed for the weekend. For some reason it was comforting to see all the Easter decorations in the stores and all the chocolate eggs; it reminded me of home and also just assured me that national holidays don't seem to differ very much between continents.

I'll keep you blog readers updated on our Easter festivities!