7.1

At 0435 on Saturday morning everyone in my house, and almost everyone of our neighbours for perhaps 60-80km's were all rudely awaken by our planet. The cause of our startlement was of course the Canterbury Quake which measured 7.1 on the Richter scale.
Half awake I woke up and heard my mum yell "It's an earthquake get in a doorframe". Still half awake I peaked out from under my covers to see everything on my shelves leaping towards me and hearing things falling of desks and cabinets in every direction. This is crazy I said to myself as I pulled my duvet over my head, to which the earths reaction was "NO, your getting up now!" and the intensity of the shaking increased. Leaping out of bed I stumbled out of my bed to my doorway where I stayed until the shakes were dying down and my mum yelled get outside!
With adrenaline pumping through my body I bounded down the stairs with them still shaking to where my dad was and he quickly thrust a jacket into my hands and told me to get outside. We ran just in time before the next quake hit. Standing there with my parents and my brother we heard the earth grinding somewhere of in the distance and heard the rattling of our house.
Terrified to go back in we stayed outside, luckily for us we're one of those families with more cars than garage room for so we huddled into the back of my dads truck and listened to the radio to find out what was going on. Here we stayed for an hour an a half before we were sure there weren't going to be any more big shakes. It's sunday night now and there have been lots of smaller aftershocks. It's gotten to the point were we trust our new houses structural integrity so much that we just pause for the duration of the quake and think to our selves ok in a few seconds I might dive for the door frame or under that table, but before those seconds are up it's all over and we continue with what we're doing.
We were quite lucky my house is only about 5yrs old and building restrictions in NZ mean that it has to be built to survive atleast a 8.5 earthquake. The worst thing for us was the power cut which meant no running water and facebook!
Thankfully theres were no deaths in the city where older buildings have collapsed. A few historic buildings have been written off which is sad. School is cancelled for two days which is both cool and annoying as I was wanting to use my teachers for revision for exams in a few days! Argh!!!
It was quite fun though sitting in the sun on Saturday with my family eating food from a freezer and discussing what we should do if our power doesn't come back. It's been an exciting week, even if it provided me with enough excitement to nuglect my study for prelim exams!