9/11

This was supposed to be another post. Probably about the new recipes I've tried out since my last post, or photos of the new house, or of the last travels.

But time passed (as it will), and I didn't get much of a chance to post about any of those things.
And soon enough, it was 9/11 again.

Its been a while since it happened- 7 years- would you believe it?
I had been in the United Stated barely over a year, was rushing through community college to make up the units to go to University with a scholarship, and enduring a long commute on a daily basis, to job and school.

That morning, I left my house at 5:45am as usual, walking 10 blocks to the bus to Los Angeles (couldn't afford a train). I didn't know that three hours away, events unimaginable were beginning to unfold.

My bus arrived at 6:15am, and about 10 minutes later, one of the female passengers got a call. Her family was watching the news. She said there had been a plane crash near the WTC, and that it was on the news. One of her brothers was NYPD, and she guessed he would be near there. Neither she nor the passenger she was speaking to took it seriously. None of the other passengers bothered either- it was probably a small accident, amplified by family rumors. My complacency arose from the fact that this new country I had come to was the strongest country in the world- terrorism was for other places, I thought- you see, Timothy McVeigh was before my time, and hadn't made much of an impact in the news press back home.

But then I got to school- and the 8am class was half empty, and no one was talking very much about what had happened. Everybody was unusually quiet, and the Anthropology class (one of 2 I took for my GEs) was duller than usual.

I remember going to work for a few hours then- the rest of my classes were after 3pm, and I worked in admissions on campus. I entered the admissions office to find it deserted- no students (usually the line would be out the door), and barely any staff had come in. My Malaysian foreign-student and co-worker barely nodded at me- she was listening to the blaring radio- since there was no TV in the admissions office, someone had dragging in the ancient radio, and jacked up the volume to the point where the news was blaring through the entire building.

But the noise could not drown out the silence everywhere.

The next few hours, days and weeks helped me somewhat understand what had happened, but nothing could have warned me against the far-reaching results of the horrific events of that day. The families that suffered still suffer, and more still are suffering, in this country and in others. In time, it may be that this day could be forgotten- time heals they say. But its going to be a while, and the image of the falling towers isn't something that will easily leave the hearts and minds of our generation.