Showing posts with label disaster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disaster. Show all posts

Saturday, 19 March 2011

Getting me through


I feel very guilty about talking up any stress or worries I am personally feeling over the last week.

We have had aftershocks and wobbles, but on the greater scale of things we have had precious little to cry about. It has been weird, living a country experiencing unprecedented trauma. As if the double-whammy would not have been hard enough to tackle, the relief effort has been castrated not just by the scale of the devastation, but by the terrifying prospects of just what could (still) go wrong at the nuclear plant(s) on the Fukushima coast.

I have been awed by the calm, rational reaction of our students and parents. I have not been so impressed with the sensational, irrational and outright inflammatory descriptions of events unfolding in Japan in some quarters of the media. I have stopped watching CNN. Some of the BBC's correspondents have also angered me. However, the scientific experts the BBC featured, especially mid-week, were extremely reassuring in their analysis and presentation of the facts. How has the Japanese media functioned? Pass. (Slowly? Spoonfed? Soporific?)

A week down the road since our own building wriggled, I was not looking forward to teaching my little tiddlers class. Don't get me wrong - lovely kids, and really warm mums. No, we would be in the same room, same kind of windy day...

The children jumped up the stairs to class and were giggling about their new word ("ji-shin" - earthquake) as they remembered where they were. They are five. They gabbled away in Japanese, not anxiously, just having a giggle. They talked about me holding their hands and how they had hidden under the table last time. I did not want to have any other reminders; my classroom has spooked me all week - rattly windows, doors banging,  pole outside swaying in the wind (is it the wind?). So, at a good volume we watched and sang along to a nice DVD, the Three Billy Goats from OUP. I had just about settled myself when my phone bleeped an earthquake warning. I leapt out of my skin. A quick check told me it was a M4.8 off the coast towards Hokkaido. But the timing was awful. I looked again at the happy faces engrossed in the DVD and thanked the stars they were all totally unharmed. The school is standing. My family are OK. We have food, we have warmth, we even have toilet paper. The sheer relief of a whole week and not being dead, I could not stop having a quick cry. Good job the DVD was on : )

(Because we were singing and dancing, we did not feel the two tremors during our lesson - so my planned worked doubly. We did spook mums downstairs though, with all the banging. Sorry about that)

Thank you girls. As long as I teach you though, I am going to be looking at you with an extra glint. You are too young to know, or care. You are going to be a weekly reminder, Friday afternoon, that I am very lucky indeed.




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Sunday, 12 July 2009

Touching the Void

After I'd finished the book, it's hard to believe the book is fact-inspired, and I felt like what was really exciting about this story was not its attractiveness, but the fact that it's a true story. All of comment and thinking carrys a lot of weight.Story in the climbing generally tends to place more emphasis on excitement and less on psychological-descriptions. The book I've read has a lot of psychological-descriptions and these word are impressive even though it's abridged edition book.

The story was move into the movie which called "Unmei wo waketa zairu". I knew the title and it previously didn't attract me, however now I want to see the movie.

Friday, 13 February 2009

newspaper headline "SWEDISH SCIENTISTS QUESTION RADIATION MYSTERY"

On 30 April 1986, Swedish scientists reported that radiation level are rising to dangerous. In western Europe, a lot of observation points reported same result. At present, the cause is uncertain. The scientist is speeding up the analysis. They analysis a lot of data from many observation points report and the wind. We must wait a few days until the result comes out. Some scientists guesses that it is an accident of a nuclear plant or an atomic bomb. We only wish not to become a big disaster.

Wednesday, 26 November 2008

Disaster!

After Reading No2:

About Edith Brown's story:
On 10 April 1912, Edith Brown and her parents, Thomas and Elizabeth, left England on the Titanic, because they wanted to start a new life in the United States.

When the Titanic suddenly hit an iceberg on the night of 14 April, Thomas immediately ran to his family and told them to put on warm clothes. Edith and Elizabeth found seats in the lifeboat, but sadly there weren't enough places for everybody. Poor Thomas died in the water along with many other people, so Edith never saw her father again.

About Tilly Smith's story:
In December 2004, ten-years-old Tilly Smith and her family went on holiday to Thailand. They stayed in a hotel on the coast.

When Tilly was on the beach one day, she saw the sea was moving back very quickly from the land. She had learned all about the signs of a tsunami at school, she immediately warned her family and other tourists about the danger.

Tilly returned to Thailand a year later, and she spoke there to thousands of people about kindness and bravery.
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Although my answer is above, the question requires using 'where'. I have no idea for using 'where'...