Wednesday night saw my first Bulgarian earthquake. Technically it happened in Romania, but it shook things up pretty well here, too. I live on the fourth floor of my building and could feel things swaying pretty well. I felt like it would be responsible of me to stand under the doorway. According to the news, there were no casualties, which meant it took a long time to find it in the news. If a magnitude 5.8 earthquake hits and kills a few hundred people, it's all you hear about for a day, but if it's happy news and no one gets hurt, a person has to dig it up out of Reuters. That's the media I guess.
Having lived most of my life in California and the slightly less earthquake-prone Alaska, a 5.8 centered 200 or so miles away rattled me a bit, but left me a bit short of panic. I can understand why some of my students' families left their apartment blocks during the quake though. These buildings aren't exactly retro-fitted, as far as I know. Anything much stronger than that quake might see a block fall, so I imagine it's a good thing these don't happen too often. Some of my students say they remember or remember hearing about a quake about 13 years ago or so, but there hadn't been anything since. This was something new for just about everyone, and when I said I'd been in 8 quakes (a guess, but I'm pretty sure it's close. I can't remember every one of the darn things) they were a bit awed. Always nice feeling like a superhero for no good reason.
The next morning, the morning I was debriefing everybody on the quake, they wouldn't let the students in the school at the beginning of the day. The rumor I heard among the students was that the earthquake had damaged something or other and that school wouldn't start until 9:00. I made my way through the crowd and up to the teachers' room. The rumors, of course, were wrong. Someone had glued the locks on the doors and they'd had to break a window to get in. School started at 8:00 (although half the students didn't come because they still thought 9:00) and each student has to pay something like 10 stotinki to get the broken window fixed. The assistant director came through during the first hour and told the class that the school was at war and that they were soldiers in preventing future gluing. I was just a bit uncomfortable with that imagery in regards to school vandalism, but whatever works I guess. The day went on normally after that.
So, big earthquake, small deal. Peace Corps warned us earthquakes could happen in Bulgaria and people either freaked out or chuckled. I was one of those who chuckled, since the odds they had given us on earthquakes happening were pretty small. But, there we go, an earthquake happened. What do you know.
In other news, I've taken to toilet-training the cat, who (if you must have a segue) freaked out before the quake for reasons I didn't then understand. I'm toilet-training her because litter is awfully messy (It's even messier in the bathroom I've found) and expensive and i think it'd be cool to have a toilet-trained cat. I've been using the Misha method which has worked well so far. At the moment, the litter box is at a point level with the toilet and she seems perfectly comfortable hopping up into it. All in four days. She's a smart kitty, is Yuli.
Unfortunately, this all means I'm headed straight for the annoying phase, where a litter box has to be removed each time I want to use the toilet. Then I have to somehow get Yuli used to not having any litter at all, and this is a cat who loves her litter. Also, the last step involves filling the litter bowl up with water, which I'm guessing Yuli will drink instead of "use" as she drinks anything that isn't the water in her designated bowl. All fun challenges though, and when it's all over, I'll have a toilet-using cat, which will be pretty nifty.
Posted by Rob at October 29, 2004 03:02 PM