Either Jesus is coming back, or an earthquake just hit

Let me just say there are few things less pleasant than being shocked out of sleep at 2:45 a.m. because your entire world is shaking uncontrollably.

Long story short: a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit off the shore of Honduras about 200 miles from the capital city Tegucigalpa at 2:24. By the way, all the news reports keep saying it happened at 3:24 but they´re not taking into account that Honduras doesn´t follow daylight savings time, so by local clocks it was 2:24. CNN says that half an hour later a 4.8 aftershock hit 155 miles north of Tegus, which is about where I am so I guess that´s about what I felt. The house I´m in is really stable so the whole thing shook but there´s no structural damage. Driving out in the country today we saw a few downed houses and some giant boulders that were pushed onto the road by landslides. There´s an insane picture on CNN of a bridge in Progreso (where I was on Tuesday) that was completely cut in half. Here in the immediate area, though, the damage seems to be minimal. Apparently there was small aftershock again at noon today (I was out in the communities with Dalila the nurse and Melvin the bearded so I missed that) and one might come tonight around 7, but they lifted the tsunami warning for Honduras so I think we´re past the worst.

At the staff meeting this morning we had the usual "where were you when..." talk. For the record, I was asleep in bed, duh. I woke up really groggy and (stupidly) tried to walk around the house rather than staying put under something semi-stable. I don´t remember much about how it felt, just that my heart almost jumped out of my throat and it sounded like a herd of angry horses were charging the house. I also made myself a sandwich once the quake stopped because I decided that if I was going to die, I wanted to go on a full stomach. I caught some grief from the night watchman for that this morning and for the rest of the day the clinic staff made jokes about my coping mechanisms. Don´t take disaster advice from me. After it subsided I stood outside with 2 other North American men who were staying for about an hour here in case a bad aftershock hit, then we drove into town to check on a friend.

News websites have better information that I do, probably, but the gist is I´m fine and everyone I know here is fine. In case of emergency, eat a sandwich.