Mysterious tremblings

I woke up in bed at ten to 4 this morning, with my whole body trembling uncontrollably, and my heart racing.

I thought that I must be having some kind of seizure, but then I noticed that the door was rattling in its frame too. Then I worked out that it was an earthquake!!!

It was the coolest thing! I have never felt an earthquake before, and it was so strange!!! The whole house was vibrating, for about 7 seconds.

The epicentre of the earthquake was in Mexico, at a place called Guerrero, 623 miles from here, where there is a lot of seismic activity. It´s magnitude was 4.3, which I don´t think is particularly big by earthquake standards, but we felt it so far away!!!

I have this theory that the day after a thunderstorm, people are a bit crazy, that there is a strange atmosphere in the air. I think the same thing definitely goes for earthquakes. Everyone was in the kitchen at breakfast, shouting, whooping and skipping around. Full of crazy excitement. I feel full of energy and totally in love with everyone. Post Tremor Love Syndrome (PTLS) I shall call it.

Xela also appears to be in the grip of a water shortage. We haven´t had any water in our kitchen for 2 days now. The problem is that the kitchen in our house is upstairs, and the water pressure has fallen to such an extent that it´s not possible to get any water out of the taps there. In the afternoons there tends not to be any water anywhere in the house at all. This actually isn´t so bad as it sounds though because nobody drinks water from the taps, and instead we have those enormous water-cooler things delivered to the house. It just means that washing things is a bit of a pain. I guess it´s because we are quite a long way into the dry season. As I said yesterday, it hasn´t rained since December 1st. I think the rain usually starts to fall again in May, so we have quite a long way to go!