Earthquake!

Whoa! News flash! We are in Hualien tonight and about 20 minutes ago experienced a small earthquake. The kids have been in bed for about 45 minutes in an incredibly safe room - no pictures on the walls, no dressers to tip, not even beds to fall out of, just mats on the floor.

When it happened I was standing at the sink in the master bathroom brushing my teeth and Q was lying on the bed. I don't know how I distinguished it from the rumblings of a large, passing truck. Maybe is was just enough bigger than that then I knew. Q and I said "earthquake" at almost the same moment. But for all the times we've practiced taking action at that word, neither of us did anything about it. It just didn't seem that bad.

After I spit and rinsed, I went to check on the kids. Weese was already out. (She's always been fast.) Big Bro had Stew in bed with him and Veeve was in the bed just over from them and they were all still awake. I asked, peering into the dark, "How is everyone in here?"

"Was that an earthquake?" Big Bro asked.

"Yes," I answered. "What did you think?"

"Pretty cool."

Big Bro described it as feeling the shaking of the hall upstairs when the washing machine is on spin cycle, times three. Veeve said it was like a rocking back and forth. I thought it felt similar to riding in the back of a truck. I told them there might be aftershocks, and that things would be fine. They didn't seem too worried. Now we get the excitement of finding out tomorrow if the shaking effected our outing to the gorge!

The adventure continues!!!!!!

UPDATE: So after completing this post, I hopped on the internet to check out any news about an earthquake and discovered what I thought was breaking news, might be old news to any at home, better in touch with what is happening in Taiwan than those of us on vacation here. So IF you are wondering, no we didn't feel anything at 3:37 in the morning. At that time we were in the city of Yuli, probably about 3 hours south of the epicenter. So what we felt tonight probably WAS an aftershock, but it's the first tremble we did feel. That said, we've spent a lot of the day in the car. My guess is little shakes are harder to feel in the car. No one has mentioned the quake to us, and I haven't heard anyone discussing it. FYI.

UPDATE: The night passed without further incident. We're prepping to head into the gorge today, though we might take it slower/do a driving tour due to our own aging bodies. We'll see!!!