Some of you may know that on the 22nd of February a 6.3 earthquake hit Christchurch -- AGAIN. Yes, about five months earlier we were hit with a 7.1 earthquake, so we were pretty confident lightening wasn't going to hit the same place twice, then BOOM.
Me and my mother have moved cities, moved islands in fact! Now we live in Wellington -- the capital city of New Zealand. I am really sad about this of course, Christchurch is a beautiful city (which is now destroyed) and it was my home for 11 years. Not to mention I went to an amazing school (the best school in the world) and had my BFFL Josh.
The thing about earthquakes is that there is the initial quake, which is terrifying, and afterwards everyone's emotions run wild and it seems difficult to stay sane.
During the earthquake I was at the University Library. Suddenly the room started shaking violently, the power went out, and people started screaming. A pipe broke and it started raining inside. I grabbed all my stuff (no way was I going to leave it behind) and we evacuated. Outside, I was lucky to find someone I knew and decided to stay with her. The unfortunate thing about the University is that it is an hours bus ride away from my house, which I estimated would take maybe 3-4 hours on foot to get home. I always promised my mum that if there was a disaster that I'd walk straight home, but when it actually happened I was way too scared to voyage out there on my own! I told her I was going to stay with my friend, and try to eventually get home. We walked for 2 hours, and during that time I managed to contact a couple of people and check that they were fine, and of course we were hearing all sorts of rumors, such as certain streets and roads were destroyed, including one that I would have to go down to get home. So I txted my mum and told her I was going to my friend's house and was going to stay there with her. The cellphone coverage was really bad, but when I eventually got her replies 1 hour later, I could see she wasn't happy about my decision. But I knew that attempting to get home with all these aftershocks on my own would be dangerous, possibly resulting in who knows what...
I kept trying to txt another best friend of mine, who was in the city center, but with no luck. I was panicking because we could see a lot of smoke and dust and could here alarms and see police and fire engines and ambulances driving in. Me and my friend got in some University student's car, someone who we didn't know, but one of the girls we were walking with knew. We spent the next 5 hours in the car going around the back suburbs and trying to get out of the horrible traffic which was hardly moving. There was liquefaction everywhere, and about half the houses we saw were destroyed. Seeing these things on the news is one thing, but when you see them with your own eyes is completely different. I couldn't help but wonder if it was all a bad dream. Finally we arrived at my friends house, and I called my mum and did my best to calm her down, told her my friends address, and soon after she came with our neighbor to pick me up and take me home.
Once I got home I felt much better, and I finally managed to contact my friend who was in the CBD, she told me that everyone was absolutely freaked, but no one was dead. I'm convinced that if I had been at school on that day that I might have been injured or killed, because me and Josh often walk around and could have easily been doing that. This hit with no warning.
Like I said, the initial thing was bad, but it was even worse afterwards... I wrote that during the last earthquake we stayed raw quite easily, and had clean water back in a few days. No such luck even 2 weeks after this quake! We decided that we'd had enough of all this, and started packing. The combination of packing, and having hardly any food and water meant that I did have to eat some cooked food. Which is ironic really, because packing really requires a lot of energy and strength, and here I was eating food that provided me with neither. My body responded not very well, of course, and now have the flu! >:|
Yesterday we finally had our whole house packed up and drove up the coast of the South Island to catch the Ferry to Wellington. My next few posts will be about me exploring this place, which I will share with everyone with some pictures.
And tonight I get to see some of my family and my 2 little brothers :)
Even though New Zealand is the sort of country which feels like it is isolated and alone and left out from everyone else's activities, we have something that I'm pretty confident not many other countries have! We have a company that makes green juices and green smoothies called Green Juice Inc., based in Wellington (where I happen to live right now!)
