I have written about both earthquake drills and adventures with bats before, but this week brought both of those home on a little more personal level.
It all started last Wednesday during elementary chapel. We were singing a song when all of a sudden I started to feel nauseous. The next moment I was hit by dizziness. I knew exactly what was going to happen next. I was going to faint! I have fainted a couple of times in the past, and it has always been proceeded by dizziness and nausea. I was trying to think of what would happen if I fainted in front of my students. Would they scream and freak out? Probably. Before I got to the end of that thought, I realized that the speakers in the chapel were swaying back and forth. I looked at the chairs. They were moving. Then I realized what was
actually happening - an earthquake. Suspicions were confirmed when the alarm went off. Some panic from the students and a little confusion about where to go followed. We always practice earthquake drills in our classroom, and we weren't in our classroom. Students were counted and everything was fine. There was no damage, just some students with shaken nerves. We learned later the earthquake was in Costa Rica. It was strong, a 7.6, and so we felt it in Managua.
On Friday the excitement continued. First thing in the morning, like every Friday, the students came in and said their Bible memory verses. While I was listening to one student, another runs up to me with a big bag. "Miss Eberly, look!" Curious, I take a peek. At the bottom of the bag is a bat. Not a baseball bat, but a living, breathing, black baby bat. That was not what I was expecting. No one has ever brought a bat into my classroom before, so I was a little unsure of how I was supposed to react. The other students crowded around and wanted a look. I saw this student's parents in the hallway, and was under the assumption they were going to take the bat back home with it. I went back to listening to memory verses. About ten minutes later, as my students were doing their morning work, I noticed the bat was on the student's desk. The parents were gone. I had a bat in my classroom. Bats are not supposed to be in bags. Bats are not supposed to be in the classroom. Thankfully, my students left for Spanish class and I found some help. The parents were called and the bat was removed. Yikes.
A few hours later my principal poked her head into my classroom. "Excuse me, Miss Eberly, we have a little emergency. Will you come here?" She quickly informed me that that Nicaragua Ministry of Education has said that due to strong earthquake activity, students needed to leave school. There had been around seventeen tremors in the last day, and it was causing some trouble along the fault line, leading officials to believe there might be some activity with the volcanoes. That left me with the excellent task of telling my students. This news would not faze many of my students; in fact, I knew it would cause excitement. Who doesn't want to leave school early? However, I knew this news would scare some of the others. Calm communication generally creates calmer reactions, and my students handled it well, for the most part. We left school early and my friends and I thought we better grab some brownie dynamite ice cream after all the excitement.
Today, San Cristobal Volcano erupted and has been sending up ash and gas, causing an evacuation around the area. It is not near enough to effect me or the school.
A very large earthquake happened in Managua forty years ago that completely destroyed the city. People here are no strangers to disaster, and the current rumblings are causing a lot of people to worry, thinking back on past damages. Thankfully we know who is in control and who holds all things in His hands. Please pray for Nicaragua this week.
