Rainbow: Family shaken to the core (Japan)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110417/LIVING/704179969/1199#rainbow-family-shaken-to-the-core

Published Sunday April 17, 2011

By Rainbow Rowell
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Alma Muhlecke was at the office when she felt the first tremor.

She was chatting with a high school friend on Facebook. She'd just typed “We're having an earthquake,” when she realized that this wasn't a normal earthquake.

A normal earthquake. The very idea would sound crazy to her friends back in Omaha. But Alma had been in Japan long enough for earthquakes to feel about as alarming as tornado warnings back home. Actually, maybe not even that worrisome ...

When people asked her husband, Jeff, what he thought of Japan's earthquakes, he'd say, “They're really cool.” You feel the power of it, Jeff had said, but you know you're safe, and then it passes.

Alma kept waiting for this one to pass.

In a way, she's still waiting.

FULL story & more photos at link.

Photo: http://www.omaha.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=OW&Date=20110417&Category=LIVING&ArtNo=704179969&Ref=AR&Profile=336&maxw=600&maxh=400
Isa Muhlecke, shown here at a torii gate at Hiroshima, adjusted very quickly to life in Japan. With a Mexican-American mother and a German-American dad, people often assumed that she was Japanese. She and her family moved back to Nebraska shortly after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, where they had been living for nearly 5 years.

[99th_Monkey]

1. Well written

esp. this part:

"Alma kept waiting for this one to pass.

In a way, she's still waiting."