Tremble and Quake

As I said I would discuss the earthquake that I mentioned in a previous blog post. As a precursor you should know that Ica is on a fault line. Since I am assuming most of you are a little rough on your Peruvian geography Ica is right next to Huancavelica. It takes me about 6 hours to get from my site to Ica City in 3 different modes of motor transportation. Anyways January 29^th my fellow Huancavelica health volunteers and I were in Ica City to do things like check our mail, use the Internet, grocery shop and interact with civilization. The day of the 29^th I fell ill. And by fell ill I mean I died a little. At one point I actually shouted I’m dying and Ty, the boy who lives about an hour from me in site, became so concerned that people would think that he was raping me that he went to buy me a Gatorade. Because what do you really do in that situation besides buy Gatorade and run for your life.

As a result of my illness I managed not to do 90% of the errands I needed to do. I instead remained bedridden watching reruns of Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives and Big Bang Theory. For some reason these were the only programs shown in English in the hostel. Around 12 am we were all still up. Allie was skyping with a friend. I was contemplating my impending death while screwing around on ESPN.com and Ty was on the roof. Suddenly the earth started to shake, as it so often does in a 6.3 earthquake. It took us about 15 seconds to figure out what was going on. Suddenly allie shouted “holy shit it’s an earthquake.” That poor poor friend she was skyping because then se fue the Internet and any further explanation of what was happening. We realized that we needed to get out of the hotel as fast as possible. Naturally I grabbed my computer and my Cipro, stomach medicine. No room key, no cell phone, no shoes, nothing actually useful. I also learned why there are fire codes because as we were running out the door Allie and I both almost ate shit and broke our noses. Our fan was plugged in and the cord was pleasantly taught across the doorway at just about knee height. Safety first kids, safety first.

As we were running outside there were parts of the hallway where rubble was falling. My glasses managed to protect me from getting any in my eyes; Allie was not so lucky. Since I didn’t get any rubble in my eyes and could see perfectly I was lucky enough to see a fat naked man pop his head out of his room. He has clearly been in the middle of something far more interesting than watching Grey’s Anatomy because he was standing there ass naked with a far skinnier what I can only assume was mistress standing behind him in a sheet. I assume it was a mistress because why would you take your wife to the same hotel Peace Corps volunteers stay at? We saw them later outside, fully clothed thankfully, but the woman was wearing leopard print skimpy pajamas and wedges. Clearly a last minute outfit. But I am not really one to judge because I didn’t even manage the shoes part of the equation.

After we got out of the hotel and found all members of our party we decided to walk a block to the plaza. We wanted to be far away from buildings if there was an aftershock. So I walked in no shoes and my computer in my dress. Oh also I should mention since I got sick I did not manage to change my dress from the night before. I was rocking a 48-hour party dress. Puuurrrrreeee class. Luckily there was no aftershock so after about 30 minutes we returned to the hotel and after about an hour more in the lobby we returned to our rooms to sleep. The trip up the next day was interesting because he car had to constantly dodge large boulders and rocks that had tumbled into the middle of the road. All I could think was wow glad I wasn’t on the road defiantly would have been squished.