6.0 Earthquake Makes Noah's Tooth Fall Out

An earthquake began shaking our apartment just a few minutes after I posted our blog last night.  Everything in the apartment started swaying back and forth.  Greg and I tried to figure out what to do - we're not really familiar with earthquake procedures other than "don't get in the elevator" as it says on the 16th floor of our apartment building, where our unit is.  Griff came up with the solution.  "I know!  Let's pray!"  Perfect!  Leave it to a child to point the way.  We prayed.  After a good 60 seconds or so of pretty strong shaking, things slowed down and then abruptly stopped.  An earthquake of 6.0 magnitude struck off the coast of Valparaiso.  The round dots on the map below show how far away people felt the shaking (the dot in Mendoza is actually in Argentina).  No damage was done that we know of.

It was an exciting night, because a few minutes later Noah's first molar came out, maybe from the earthquake.  :)  He came running in our room to show us.  He and Greg wrote two letters to the tooth fairy - one in English and one in Spanish.  The tooth fairy left 1,000 pesos (~$2).  Apparently the tooth fairy pays out in local currency!  It's always fun when a baby tooth falls out - wondering how the tooth fairy would handle this in a different country made it extra fun.

We didn't go into La Pintana today because we'll be going in for the next bunch of days.  Instead we went back to the children's museum.  The boys had fun showing me all their favorite exhibits.  This place surpassed my expectations by a lot.  I figured it would be kind of like the rest of Santiago - older building, dim lights, no heat, things that worked but things that didn't work.  It was none of those things, except I guess it didn't have heat (thank goodness our apartment does - it's one of the big reasons we chose it!).  It reminded me a lot of Epcot, just lots of fun, hands-on stuff for the kids.  The museum has a whole room dedicated to earthquakes, so we realized our experience the night before was not so unusual for people in this country.

We had fish tonight since we had more time to spend preparing dinner.  We don't know what kind it was, but it was white and incredible!  Not fishy at all, but not tougher like chicken either.  Really good.  I now have some "helpers" after dinner to wash the dishes.  Sometimes, while washing a plate, the water falls off the plate and onto the floor rather than the sink.  Oh well, we'll buy more paper towels at the grocery store tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a big day for us!  The pastor at one of the churches in La Pintana heard that we are here and asked us to come and pray for their sick.  Since La Pintana is an area over-ridden with drugs, alcohol and other tough stuff, there are a lot more people to pray for than just the sick.  Please pray for us, that people would be healed tomorrow.

Thanks for reading!  Hope the rain lets up in Colorado soon!

Love,

The Moyers