Aaaahhhh!! What was that?!

There I was, sitting in my classroom, at my desk, enjoying my break before my next class when all of a sudden I hear a loud
BBBOOOOOOOMMM!!!
It sounded like crashing thunder all around me. My classroom violently shook like an earthquake, the power went out, my wall of windows rattled, the wood sliding doors crackled and creeked, and the screams of the students in the classroom nextdoor didn't help ease the feeling I had of my heart jumping from my chest!  I may or may not have said a couple innapropriate words under my breath at this moment, but can you blame me?!  I thought North Korea was bombing outside my school!

***(I should clarify: While the threat of N. Korea bombing is never a serious concern of South Koreans, you can bet that 90% of the teachers had a split second where they thought maybe, just maybe.)

As soon as the shaking stopped, there was complete silence, and the eeiriest feeling took over me! I grabbed my phone and ran into the hallway and immediatey began slamming the windows shut with the other teachers, to keep as much of the black smoke out as possible!  Hanah yelled to me, "A ship exploded!"  My heart was pounding and I ran to the end of the hallway where some students were crowding around a window.  Outside, I watched as flames shot up, and the ship's workers scurried to get off  and onto the dock! 

We all worked to settle the kids down and get them into the dark classrooms, passing out their cell phones so they could call their parents.  Within about 5 minutes, the principal ordered that all students go directly home.  The teachers gave each of their students a thick wad of paper towels to cover their mouths from the smoke and off they went, still shooken up from the blast.



I called Aaron to see if he had heard the explosion too, and sure enough, his school, about a mile away as the crow flies, heard and felt it as well.  He did some research and found that suppossedly "a worker from the electric company put a little too much oxygen in one of the oil tanks and kaboom... Two workers were injured as well as one passerby.  Luckily no one was killed in the explosion."

This was, hands down, my most frieghtening moment while living in Korea and it reminded me just how much I hate earthquakes and thunder!  Good news is, my afternoon class was cancelled... It wouldn't be like me to not look at the bright side of this, right?!