I grew up in a place where flooding was pretty common (I’ve attended classes during flooding – walked right through the flood to go to school), but it did not prepare me for my first encounter with earthquakes.

During my first month as a newlywed and Bay Area resident, I was asleep in our apartment one morning and I felt the weirdest thing. The entire place was moving. I went to look out of the window and the ground was moving in waves, like water. I had never seen anything like it and I was very glad when it stopped. A few years later my mother was staying with us and she came out of the guest room alarmed. I told her that it was “just an earthquake” and she looked at me like I was crazy, but they were a fact of life by then. It’s amazing what people can get used to.