I came slow into awareness of the horror of the past week, and still it comes slow, but heavier each day. There are stories and pictures and Wen Jiabao flew in, old and frail as he is, they all sigh, to give commands and tell the little girls not to cry. Still they cried. They're estimating in the end it may be more than 50,000 dead.

On Monday afternoon I was on my balcony, squinting at the sun which glared off my laptop. At 3:30 I got an SMS message from my Chinese tutor (who's always forwarding me messages) about Sichuan, where he knows I used to live and love. An earthquake, 7.8 on the Richter scale occurred at 2:30 it said. "An earthquake," I think, "hmm." And that's about all I think. I'm trying to write through my thoughts from the weekend's existential psychology workshop. The will-to-meaning is what keeps us alive, says Frankl.

At 1:00 before the world changed ZX had called, wanting to know if I had ideas about how to donate in China for Burma relief. We talked for just a few minutes while I sat in the sun on my balcony with my laptop and my coffee. The world was beautiful.

At 4:00 when he calls again the world is still beautiful; I'm baking perfect cookies. I try to answer, it cuts off, and I can't get through back to him. "My phone must be out of money," I think. "I'll have to run to the LianTong place before going to the office this evening." But time slips away, and I end up hurrying to the office at a quarter to 7:00 just in time for the evening's workshop.

But when I arrive there is unusual energy in the conversation and FR and GX have a crazy story. There was an earthquake in the afternoon, they say. We felt it, and evacuated the building. They tell their story - how the floor began to sway underneath them, how they looked at each other, asking "what's happening?" and ran out the door and down the stairs. One flight down and FR decided she had to go back for the center's money. GX didn't want to let her, but she fought her way back up through the stream of people on the way down to grab the center's money, her wallet, and her MP3 player. GX told the software designers in the office next to ours, "There's an earthquake!" but they didn't move. Everyone else, it seems, flew down and outside to stand around with their bags and their cellphones, or whatever they thought to grab.

Suddenly there was connection and fear and I tried to call ZX again. And again. And again. I used FR's phone, and finally got through. He's fine. There's a big crack in his parent's building. Everyone is out on the sports field, and afraid to go near buildings, some in their pajamas, but fine.

We don't talk until later about how they all were sure the buildings would fall. His coworker screamed, "It's over!", sure she was about to die. Others were so frightened they jumped from the seventh floor and, tragically, did die.

Everyone I know is okay, but still it hurts. Former students, who are mostly from Sichuan, have undoubtably suffered losses, though I haven't heard specific stories. I want to be with my friends in Sichuan. I feel helpless and far away (as many of they do too). The horror of how lives have been turned upside down sinks in more every day.

Someone finds online a teacher's blog from the high school in Beichuan where a thousand kids were buried in rubble. The last post is pictures of the kids and teachers enjoying a sports day twenty-four hours before the earthquake. I find myself fighting back tears in the middle of the afternoon.

I call my friend Iris, who is a fourth-year nursing student back in Nanchong. The school is sending a group of nurses into the harder hit areas. Hundreds want to go, but there is space for only twenty nursing students. Iris says if she is chosen, she wouldn't tell her parents, knowing they would worry so much. But she isn't accepted, and I'm a little relieved, because I would have worried about her too. We laugh about how I might have been accepted to go - they were mainly looking for sturdy-built nurses - ones that could work long hours and not collapse without food and water. My roommate, who in general gets bright-eyed about soldiers, told me reverently last night how a bunch of them fainted from overexertion, or lack of sleep, or food, or whatever.

A big rescue team from Japan was allowed in today, a few days late, if you're asking some people. Why do they even bother with money? FR asks. Who cares about how much money has been donated when people are dying? The instant noodle factories should just load their trucks up and drive in there to donate it themselves. This is China, they say, shaking their heads how at a time like this, there are still people who can only think about making a buck. (But it's not China, it's the world, I want to tell them.) At the office I get laughed at for having donated money through SMS. She can't believe that I would be so stupid as to fall for the scams. But I've grown used to the ridicule, and it doesn't touch me. (At some point, I want to tell her, you have to start trusting, and if I was wrong this time, 12 RMB is not much of a price to pay.)

My friend William writes on his blog about his experience in Jiangyou (close to Mianyang).