Our Earthquake Experience

Holding my copy of the book with a backdrop of sunshine and fall foliage

One year ago I ran across a review on Goodreads of “Our Earthquake Experience: We Will Rise Again” compiled by Shannon Robak and written by the children of Maitidevi Boarding School in Nepal. I purchased the book that same day, even though it is only offered in print format. I exclusively buy electronic books because of a marital ultimatum on how much space I’m allowed for my library. Due to the handwritten nature of this book, a Kindle version isn’t feasible. So it’s now one of the few hard copy books I own—at least until I let someone borrow it and then they pass it on to yet another friend.

Today I decided to enjoy this pre-Thanksgiving weather and finish reading the accounts of the older children in the school. One of the twelve-year-old girls wrote that she wants to be a doctor. Her story is one of the longest in the book, and she focuses on the people around her and the deaths that occurred. She even talks about things a doctor would (body parts, but I don’t want to get gross), reminding me of my sister who is now a doctor of emergency medicine and loved to show us graphic pictures of diseases that normal people would never want to see. (I love you, Lisa!)

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I didn’t realize I was obsessed with earthquakes until Matt mentioned not everyone subscribes to the USGS Earthquake Notification Service , a handy tool to stay up-to-date on the latest earthquake locations and magnitudes via email alerts. A friend of mine introduced me to this resource back in 2003, and I’ve been a subscriber ever since. 
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Tomorrow the United States partakes in a tradition of thankfulness. I am grateful that my family and I are blessed with safety and security. I'm also grateful that I have never actually been in a large-magnitude earthquake.