I feel this awful, gaping, sick hole in my stomach and my soul when I think about the earthquake in China, which has devastated the city where we lived for a year and a half. Not just lived, but loved, loved our life and loved so many of the wonderful, funny, unique, earnest students that enriched it while we were there. Mario sent out a bunch of emails last night to former students, and we got a response from one, Navy (their English names were all so fun), saying that she was safe in another province, but that her family was heavily affected. She wrote this (sic) about the city where we lived and the university campus where we taught:
"The situaton of Mianyang is very bad, especiall Beichuan county of Mianyang. More than 7,000 people died from the earthquake. It is hard to call the people in Mianyang. The headquarter of our company in Mianyang also suffers the damage cuased by the disaster. The server of our headquater is distroyed. And the internet, electricity, water supply were destroyed in Mianyang. So it is hard to contact the people in Mianyang. As the information we got from some friends in Mianyang this morning, SWUST is safer, but also damaged. I just got a photos of SWUST office building. You can have a look. A lot of citizen go to SWUST to avoid suffering, that can be cuased by tall buildings."
So it sounds like the campus isn't too bad off, but so many of our students and their families from the area around Mianyang were heavily affected, and I feel awful to think of how many people were killed, particularly so many of the students in collapsed schools...each the only child, the brightest future hope, of their families.
The worst part is, I want to do something so bad, hop on a plane and go there (although of course that is not possible as the Chinese government is not allowing it) or at least send money to the school, but there is no way to contact anyone right now.
ugh. It is very hard to focus on my last paper with this unbearable tragedy weighing so heavily on my mind and heart.
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3 comments:
***hugs***
The world is a scary place, no?
I've missed your posts lately! Hop you're not being completely crushed by your enormous workload lately :)
Hope*, not hop. hehe. And lovely double use of the word "lately." Gotta love Monday mornings.
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