I didn't feel a thing...

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We're ok. For those that haven't heard, a massive earthquake hit Sichuan and Chongqing but, we're in good old Guangxi. Supposedly, the quake was felt as far away as Vietnam, but since we didn't feel anything here, I'm a bit skeptical.

The death toll keeps going up and up. On the news yesterday, I heard that only 10 people were killed but now they are saying maybe 10,000. We'll see what the final toll is.

In January, Alex and I were deciding between this school, a school in Kunming and a school in Chengdu. I heard some bad things about the school in Chengdu and maybe that's a good thing, considering how hard it got hit. Maybe we were just lucky, though I hate to say that when so many have died.

I just didn't want anyone to get worried about us.

Have you seen those pictures going around about the "artist who starved a dog" in an art gallery? His point, apparently, was that people pass staving people on the street everyday and don't care, and yet if you put a starving dog in an art gallery, suddenly people care. I disagree completely with his methods, but I agree with his point wholeheartedly. We don't care about something unless it's cute and we can sympathize. Ugly homeless people with problems do not fit our parameters for sympathy but dogs do. Does that bother anyone else?

This is the same feeling I get when I'm reading about the China quake and see headlines like "Effect of quake on panda preserve still unknown " above stories like "Death toll in China quake exceeds 12,000" (both from AP).

That's like a headline reading "Effect of yesterday's terrorism on the squirrels of Central Park unknown" running ahead of a story saying "6,000 feared dead in NYC".

Who cares about the pandas when so many people are dead, homeless or injured? Hey, Associated Press! Get your priorities straight!

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