After a very unusual afternoon in Peru and a 20 hour plane journey, I arrived safely to San Francisco. I have quickly adjusted to my return to US culture. --Eating ice cream, throwing toilet paper IN the toilet, taking long hot showers and reading my junk mail...Daniel and I have already begun our lengthy literary journey through the latest Harry Potter novel as well.

And speaking of Harry Potter, I just happened to have been watching the Harry Potter movie in Lima Peru shortly before I felt the earthquake hit. I had gone down to the oceanfront mall Miraflores (A neighborhood in Lima) to see the movie and after it was over I began to walk the few blocks back to my hostel. I was feeling pretty good at the time since the Harry Potter movie really gives off that "I can save the world from evil" feeling. Half way up the block I felt the ground shaking a bit under my feet. A few seconds later, hundreds of people flooded the streets. I asked someone what happened and they said there was an earthquake. I looked around at the stores and noticed that all the manikins in the windows had fallen over. All the buildings appeared to be in tact but everyone appeared distraught and I noticed people crying and using their cellphones. Since I had already packed my camera for my trip back to the states, I unfortunately didn't get any pictures...

I quickly walked through the crowds and went into an Internet place because I had to print out my plane ticket since I was supposed to meet up with some girls at my hostel to share a taxi to the airport at 800pm. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for one of the girls, I had agreed to go 4 hours early to the airport in order to share a taxi with a girl that had a flight going a few hours earlier. After leaving the Internet place, I went to the convenient store across the street to see if I could buy snacks with my last few Soles and ran into one of the workers from my hostel. She was watching the news in the convenient store and expressed worry about her son who wasn't home from school yet. She said never in her life had she experienced an earthquake so strong before. I later learned that the earthquake lasted over a minute in duration. I offered her some reassurances and went across the street to the hostel. The hostel visitors were sitting down and watching a movie and appeared completely un-alarmed. We learned that the earthquake was on CNN and everyone took turns using the Internet to e-mail home to family.

Thirty minutes later, the taxi arrived and we began our journey to the airport. The ride was a challenging one since many people remained in the street and there were several traffic jams. Apparently, there are still some adobe (Mud and Water) homes left in Lima and they are known to be very unstable during earthquakes. While in the taxi, we felt an after shock for a few seconds. Our taxi driver was resourceful and assertive in his efforts to get us to the airport so the girl with the earlier flight wouldn't miss her plane (If planes were going out). The taxi driver did not hesitate to drive up on curbs around traffic jams and drove down a street in reverse to get to another street with less traffic.

When we arrived at the airport there was a large crowd of people outside. We learned that national flights were not going out but there were two or three international flights that were still scheduled to leave. These flights did not leave on time but did depart later that evening. Initially they were not letting anyone into the airport because some of the ceiling tiles had fallen and some of the windows had broken. My flight was later in the evening and fortunately, we were able to get our tickets and leave on time.

While watching the news at the airport, we learned that the center of the earthquake was a 7.9 and was around a hundred miles south of Lima. There were several mortalities and a significant amount of damage near the center of the quake. Some damage had occurred in Lima, but for the most part, Lima did not suffer that much damage. Fortunately, my friend Shannon was in Bolivia at the time of the quake and hopefully her travel plans won't be affected!

So now I'm home, listening to some CDs I bought at the "Grey" market (Because after all, they do provide a written receipt!) and trying to figure out my work schedule for next week.

Thanks to all of you that have written and kept in touch this summer. I look forward to seeing you all soon!

--Until next summer!

-stace