First let me start by saying Happy New Year! I hope that everyone has had a wonderful start to 2009. It's been pretty decent for us on this end of the world. The kids went back to school today, therefore I feel like my vacation has just begun and I've been fortunate enough to hear from Derrick a few times already.
He seems to be holding up well, surviving the cold and finding humor in the recent seismic activity he's been feeling. He called yesterday and said they had their first snow. He's been watching it slowly come down the mountain side closer to them, yesterday he woke up to a fresh blanket of snow on the ground. He said it was warmer when it was snowing then it was a few hours later. He's got a specific blanket he requested in transit now. We're both hoping that it gets there sooner than later. Currently it's taking about 4 weeks to get from here to there but we're hoping that was because the influx holiday mail.
He said he woke up in the middle of the night a few nights ago thinking he felt an earthquake. Once he was awake and alert he thought he must have been dreaming. This was the same night they got their first snow. He was talking to his interpreter and realized that he'd actually been through his first big earthquake in years. The ones we'd felt in CA were all so long ago, and usually happened over night that he'd forgotten the feeling. He said it was cool, the sensation of the earth moving underneath him. As he was telling me about it, the nervous one that I am, I started checking out geological sites to see what information I could pull on this earthquake. I wound up on the USGS site and was able to track the location and proximity to him. The one he felt was a 5.9. It was the second big earthquake in a matter of days, the previous one measured 5.8. Then today I was just checking out the site again because information I had heard about the Indonesia quakes and saw that early this morning he had another one measuring a 5.8. He is roughly one hundred miles from the epicenter but considering the terrain, I believe he is feeling them at a much lesser magnitude then what it is measuring as, as they are so high in the mountains, the quake has further to travel to reach the surface. Maybe I'm way off, but that is the logic that is keeping me sane now. Hopefully I'll get a call or e mail within the next few days telling me that he's fine and the tremble was just as exciting and fun as the previous ones.
Living where I do and not speaking Japanese, I am at a huge disadvantage. Most Americans living here are. If you aren't in a position to be in the know, you simply don't know, usually until after the fact of any given situation. I was talking to a friend who lives abroad the Air Base and she mentioned the hearing the air raid sirens off and on all night last night. For what ever reason, being on another base or something else altogeher I didn't hear them. She initially chocked them up to monthly training. Her neighbor later came over to tell her they were on as a warning device. The recent earthquakes in Indonesia had triggered a tsunami warning for us.
When I was looking at the earthquake information for Derrick's location I noticed there were several quakes in Indonesia, some as great as 7.4 magnitude, but I forgot about the residual effects we have to be on alert for. I guess it's a good thing we didn't have a tsunami, I would have been blindsided. I'm sure the warnings were being broadcast on all the local channels, but there was no mention of it on the American stations. I'll be happy when we have live news broadcasts again (just under ten months).
In any case, I wanted to update everyone on how things are going, both here and with Derrick. I don't know what news you all receive where you are, but we're fine in our respective countries. The earthquakes are still entertaining for Derrick and the tsunami warning was lifted last night. I've heard rumor that there was a small one (as in a few inches) but nothing confirmed, and it didn't affect Okinawa. Hopefully this is the most of the potentially catastrophic excitement we'll see this year, but the year is young, so we shall see.
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