Terremoto

I'm not really sure what to say about my experience with the earthquake. I was in my house. As soon as it was over my host parents started calling everyone they knew to make sure that they were okay, including some relatives in Japan (Laura, I thought of you!). Since my only previous experience with earthquakes was that little one in South Bend freshman year, I didn't realize how unusual this one was. I didn't know how destructive it was until days later, when we were able to watch the news on tv again. My part of Santiago is fine, we've been using the metro, shopping, and yesterday made a trip to Valparaiso. However, the epicenter was very near Linares, where we had our pre-program. A lot of the places we visited in February are the worst hit. The seaside town we visited my first day here was almost completely destroyed in the tsunami, and another small town we visited called Nirivilo was badly hit. My host family in San Dionisio is okay--they live in a newly built house, so it meets earthquake standards. It's strange that I was going to write about Constitucion and Nirivilo in this blog, but now the places I was going to write about don't exist anymore.