5.8!

Sunday afternoon I was sitting in the living room of our host family's house, and Kara was in our bedroom reading when we had a new experience- one which the news says was a 5.8 on the Richter scale. (Click here to read the news story.)

Neither of us were quite sure of what was happening at first. Kara thought that a dog had jumped up on the bed with her and made it shake, and I thought a big truck was going by on the street outside. I knew that wasn't the case as soon as I looked down at the floor and could see it moving! It wasn't frightening as much as it was just plain weird- seeing the concrete house around us move as if we were in a cartoon.

A lot of the Guatemalans can remember the earthquake that destroyed a lot of the country in 1976, so they took it quite a bit more seriously than we did. Kara came out of the bedroom smiling until she saw the serious looks on the faces of our family. We certainly don't want to experience it again while we're here- thankfully this one didn't cause any damage anywhere- but it was about 15 seconds of a whole new experience for us.