Bananas!!!!

56 seconds seems like nothing when waiting for a friend to come downstairs to go somewhere fun. A blink in time when staying in bed after the alarm has gone off. 56 seconds passes without notice in the classroom, in a movie, listening to music, walking to the store. 56 seconds isn't even noticeable in so many instances (ok, except in football!). 56 seconds in a 7.4 earthquake feels like a week and a half.
Bananas- This is the game I was playing with Ana at school today. It's kind of like scrabble but each person has their own 'board' and the object is to make as many connecting words as possible and when you run out of your initial stack of letters, you say, "Bananas!" An both parties pick up another letter.

As I said "Bananas!" to finish the game, the look on Ana's face shocked me. "Afuera! Es un temblor!" She said firmly, but calmly. We went outside and the ground started swaying. We both looked up at the porch roof and she shooed me further down the patio to a part where there was no roof. The ground was still swaying. We crouched down a couple times. Still swaying. She moved back up a step or two and we just stared at each other in shock. I couldn't tell at this point if it was the ground still moving, or my body acting like jelly. We could hear some screaming from outside, and strangely the crying that we had been listening to all morning by the many many children in the area completely stopped. The movement stopped, the crying stopped, the screaming stopped. No sirens, even. Strange.

Ana and I slowly moved back inside and she called her family. I attempted to call mine or at least call Carolina in guate city but it was a no go. We decided to continue our studies but canceled our plans to go to Fuentes Georginas, thinking it probably wasn't a good idea to go partway up a semi-active volcano amidst loose rocks with the risk of aftershocks. We stalled at the school for a couple of hours watching the tv news. 7.4, less than two hours from here. Looks like Xela did ok, though some of its neighbors, mostly it's poorer neighbors, didn't fare so well.
I just checked in with the shuttle company and as of now we are still leaving for San Cristobal in the morning. I hope preliminary news is the truth and not too many people died. I guess I'll know more after I leave here. That seems to be the way things go.
Until then, Bananas!