Whatever gets you through the night, it's alright, alright.

Once a month, on a Tuesday at 11 a.m. a tsunami alarm goes off in Hana, just as a precaution for when the real deal strikes. So you can imagine our response to hearing the familiar ring close to 10 p.m. last night, on a Thursday none the less. We’d previously been told if the alarm does go off, to fill as many things with fresh water as possible and head up the mountain. Chelsea called Krista, who had just heard of news from Japan, and said not too worry, that waves might hit around 3 a.m. and that we’d be fine. But still it’s not the most comforting feeling….We have an on going joke with peanut butter here, as we eat it by the spoonfuls… “Forget apples, a spoonful of peanut butter a day keeps the doctors away!” the quotes just keep us entertain for hours washing flowers….anyways, we joked that all we needed was peanut butter to survive this, and that we should have stocked up…. A way to calm our nerves I guess.

Growing up in the north east, and only really worrying about blizzards and driving in snow, I wasn’t really sure what to think of a tsunami, quite naively I’m seeing now. The proximity to Japan didn’t really hit us until last night either! The night was a strange one indeed, with the alarm going off every hour, and floods of text messages and phone calls coming on both Chelsea and my phones throughout the night. In that half awake, half asleep mode, we were real out of it, talking to each other periodically, cursing our phones…Chelsea even got up in the middle of the night to fill up jugs of water, this morning realizing the state of consciousness in which she did it in….

This morning the sun shined however, and as we weeded near the Fugly to listen to the radio, we heard that the big island, as well as Honolulu and the west side of Maui all experienced flooding. Thank God Hana’s okay. In honor of surviving our first tsunami, we decided cheesecake was in order, naturally, so we headed down to town to get us some (we discovered one of the stores in town stocks it!) Stopping at Phyllis’s on the way there for a bit to eat, we got a laugh or two in, learned some more Hawaiian culture, were advised not to go to the beach and went on our merry way.

I feel like more of an exciting response to this event is in order, but can’t really deliver. Just a strange, strange night, and we’re all quite exhausted.

All humor aside, this earthquake is devastating to the people of Japan, and I truly feel blessed that nothing more serious happened here. Hoping that those displaced find their families, and chaos calms down soon ….

Aloha, stay off the beach and lets go Cuse.