Tsunami!

Yesterday I started out the day with a nice run. It was nice out when I left, but as soon as I got just about as far as I wanted to go, it started pouring rain...literally pouring. So I had no choice but to run home in the storm and getting completely soaked (it looked as though I had jumped in the bay fully dressed). I thought that would be the biggest event of my day.
But apparently not. A few hours later, some sirens went off on the island, and Val came running in, announcing there'd been an 8.3 earthquake off the coast of Samoa and that a tsunami might be coming our way...within fifteen minutes. We checked online and saw that tsunami warnings had indeed been issued for most islands in the South Pacific, as well as for New Zealand and Hawaii. It really wasn't expected to be too bad in Moorea, considering we were quite far away from the epicenter and have a nice barrier reef protecting us, but we decided to be cautious and all go up the hill to the library, especially since our dorms are right on the edge of the water. It was actually kind of funny, in our moment of haste we grabbed electronics, wallets, the dogs, baguettes, nutella, and rum -- all quite important for survival, apparently. The whole class gathered on the balcony of the library, waiting for the tsunami to hit...but of course it never did. It was still an exciting experience, although we did hear in the news that things were not so lucky in Samoa and elsewhere in the Pacific.
So I guess we're really getting a taste of the island life: work hard, go for a row, snorkel, avoid stonefish, evacuate when tsunamis come, and relax the rest of the time.