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The last couple of days you could sense people wanting to return back to what is a more normal life. In the morning we took a 40 minute walk to IKEA, (yes that IKEA), and bought a couple of bags of coffee and had an ice cream cone which cost 1 RMB (about 14 cents). In the afternoon we took a bus ride to the large shopping area in the center of our town to check up on our friends that work in a restaurant there. The mall was packed with people much like it would be at a busy sidewalk sale in the states, perhaps not quite as many people as a normal Saturday, but, busy. We walked from the mall to meet a friend who had invited us to eat at an outdoor restaurant near her office. During our meal we saw many convoys of ambulances headed for the nearby hospitals. Sirens are pretty normal in this city and often don't mean anything at all, but, they have increased in number and now seem to have more significance.

Everywhere in this town of 11 million there are people collecting donations, food, water and clothing to send to the disaster areas. People are using there private vehicles, businesses are using their trucks, and the government is using all their force to bring the goods to where they are needed. We've been told there's quite a traffic jam on the highways headed north. Of course the biggest difficulty is the roads in the mountains that are ruined. Also we've seen many people sleeping in tents in parks, on the sidewalks and any open area they can find. Some of them are from Chengdu and others are refugees. It's not easy for us to sort it all out because of the language difficulties.

Last night we decided it would be okay to sleep in our pajamas instead of fully dressed and ready to run as we had the previous nights. We've kept a backpack, a bag with shoes and food at our door all week ready to grab and go. Anyhow, at 1:08 A.M. our bed began to shake, there was a rumbling and we were wide awake, very wide awake. This was followed by strong winds, thunder, lightning, and rain. We quickly got dressed but decided to stay in our apartment. According to the earthquake website we check often, last night's quake was 5.7 and about 100 miles away from us. By the news we're hearing there were no new casualties from this tremor.

We are scheduled to return to our office tomorrow morning but are very hesitant. For some reason working on the 15th floor of an older office building just doesn't appeal to us right now. In the afternoon we're scheduled to teach English at a petro-chemical research building and that will be fine as the 'classroom' is on the second floor. It's where we were when the 7.9 earthquake hit on Monday. We'll see what happens.

A month ago we schedule a vacation trip to Singapore and Malaysia to begin this coming Friday. We're anxious to get out of here for a bit, now much more than we were before. In the meantime we're getting along fine.