Weekly Mandarin: 41

41st edition: Di zhen

Earthquakes (di jhen) scare me. Having never had one growing up, they're even worse. Living on the 13th floor of an apartment building, they're eeeeeven worse. And when they wake me up in the middle of the night to the sense that someone is shaking my bed... yeah, you get the point.

Last night, at 3:45, we had a di zhen. The center was about 65 miles from where I live, and the magnitude on the Richter scale was 5.6. It wasn't my first quake, but it was my scariest so far mostly because it was late and I was home alone.

But, I suppose the earthquakes and typhoons are just part of the once-in-a-lifetime aspect of living here. Consider me pretty much ready to go home now.