Thursday, March 4, 2010

Tsunami



Oh yeah, and we had a tsunami while in Oahu... We were woken up Thursday night / Friday morning by a fire alarm (people don't know how to cook popcorn, set off the smoke detectors and had to evacuate the whole building) and then we were woken up Saturday morning to TSUNAMI alarms. They told us that we had to be on the 3rd floor or higher (good thing our rooms were on the 4th floor). They told us that they expected the waves to hit around 11:37am. The alarms started going off around 4 or 5 am. I am glad they gave ample warning, but it also gave ample FREAK OUT time :). We were supposed to be checking out and heading to the airport around the time the waves were supposed to hit. Instead of hanging out by the pool for our last morning, we were filling the bathtubs (in case the water went out and we needed to flush the toilets), buying non-perishables from the marketplace, calling flight carriers to see if flights were still taking off, checking to make sure we could stay in our rooms even though we were going to be past check-out, etc, etc etc. Thank you all for your prayers! It ended up being very lack-luster (which is what Ryan and I were expecting the whole time - see our scared faces above), but it is ALWAYS an adventure! We watched the news and waited most of the morning... Then we decided to make a break for it and drove to the airport (although our flights were delayed, they were still set to take off, so we needed to get to the airport or risk missing our flights). Aaron, Eric, Matthew, Ryan and I were on the same flight (which was leaving after the delays at 3pm) so we went while Jamie and Charlene waited (since their flight wasn't until after 5pm) for the all clear. While we were at the airport they made the announcements that they had cleared everything and that the threat had passed... Again, not that I was hoping for destruction, but we were sort of thinking it would be cool to say "WE SURVIVED THE TSUNAMI OF 2010" (which technically we CAN say, but in another day or two no one will even remember what it was).

All-in-all, our vacation was an ADVENTURE! We had a good time, but all decided we probably won't go back to Oahu again... Not our favorite island, but we are so blessed that we even had the opportunity to go!

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