The Earthquake in China

The afternoon that the massive earthquake happened in China we did not feel a thing. That evening we did not check news on internet, so we did not even know about it until the next morning when we checked our e-mails from home and found out people were worried about us!
Of course, that next day all of our readers were talking about the earthquake. The situation made some of them ask lots of questions about how that related to the text we were reading. At least one asked if that was a punishment for a way of life. One of the readers has a friend living in the earthquake area, so she was especially worried. I think that the concern that other nations had for China really made an impression on the students.
The Chinese government did a good job of responding quickly to the tragedy. They were organized and effecient, but the job was enormous because of the mountainous and secluded locations of many of the affected villages. The government declared three days of official mourning, and all public events were canceled for those three days. One week after the earthquake, at approximately 2:20 p.m., the time of the earthquake, there was a national 3-minute silence. The interesting thing about those three minutes of silence was that, at least in Qingdao, there was noise. Ron and I were in the middle of reading sessions, so we stopped for the 3 minutes. Ron had a good view of the street outside his window. All of the cars stopped where they were in the streets, and most people got out of their cars and folded their hands behind their backs. However, even though the taxi drivers stopped their cars, they honked their horns continuously---some were even standing outside their cars while reaching inside to honk their horns.
Sun Woo, the owner of the Dr. Paul's Language School, and David S. had worked very long and hard arranging for the Harding University Choir and the Korean Christian University Choir to present 3 days of concerts at the local university. The Sunday night concert was held as planned, but the next two days had to be canceled because of the official mourning days. Ron and I fortunately had tickets for the Sunday performance, so we got to hear the groups, and they were really great. There were maybe 500 in attendance that night. It was wonderful that the Chinese government allowed the two groups to come to China and to perform! But it was sad that the final two days were canceled. Many of our readers were very disappointed that they did not get to hear the choirs. However, several of our readers were invited to be tour guides for the Harding students one of the days, and they were excited to get to meet American students.