Sandy

The first part of this week was pretty exciting. As you probably know, on Sunday/Monday a massive storm was headed for the east coast. Hurricane Sandy. She was predicted to be the storm of the century. She was huge, strong, slow and, with the cold front and snow expected with her, she was not your typical hurricane. So, understandably, people were nervous. Many schools had prematurely closed and government officials had declared states of emergency up and down the coast. As for us in the western Virginia town of Buena Vista, there were varying degrees of concern. For those who had been here for the major storm this summer than downed trees and killed power for weeks; there was a lot of stress. For those of us who have been conditioned to not be bothered by a little wind and have seen the minimal effects of hurricanes on BV before;  we weren't too ruffled. I was a good kid and prepared like I was supposed to anyway though. I bought some water, charged my phone,pulled out my flashlight, and got my homework done that required my computer. Monday was a really weird/eerie day. It was dark and cold and quiet. Everyone was a little nervous, not knowing what to expect. We were all bracing ourselves for whatever might come (and secretly hoping it would be good enough to cancel school). By late Monday night, it was raining a little and there was a breeze, but nothing major. I woke up on Tuesday morning to near-freezing temperatures, snow, rain, and a slight breeze. But I also woke up to every tree being perfectly in-tact, light and heat in my house, no flooding, and a hot shower. While all of SVU was grumbling about the disappointment of the century and having to go to class bright and early, I was watching and reading news reports in horror at the damage that had been done so close to me (but let's be honest, I still wished school would have been cancelled too). It's weird to be so close (literally 2 or 3 hours away) to so much destruction and yet be perfectly fine. Really nothing happened here, and yet:

I have to throw this in here too. I have indescribable amounts of respect for these men. They never left. 

All in all, we got extremely lucky here and I know that there are huge numbers of people that were not near as lucky as we were. I also feel extremely lucky because of the huge amount of love that I felt during all of this. I have the most incredible friends and family who keep an eye on me from a distance. They never miss a beat and usually know what's going on here even before I do. I didn't even know we were expecting a hurricane until my sweet Aunt Vicki text me on Saturday to see how the weather was looking for us. Even though we ended up being completely fine here, it was so nice to get those texts and calls making sure everything was okay. I have absolutely the best people in my life. So blessed. I can't wait to see them all in just two weeks!!