back in school

i'd forgotten how much you live in a bubble when you're in school. i had started writing a post about the first week of classes (only one more left!) when i turned the tv on and heard people talking about september 11th. i had to check my computer calendar to be like. oh. that's today. people have said that this is our generations jfk moment. that we will all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when the trade centers were hit. and i do. i was at school, sleeping and my brother called me and told me to turn the news on. i remember being like e, i'm in shippensburg you're in minneapolis, the same thing is not going to be on the news. and he was like rachel just turn it on. so i was on the phone with him when the second tower got hit and when the pentagon got hit. i remember seeing the cameras shake when the pentagon was hit, they had been doing some sort of press conference about nyc and then the building started to shake. and watching the second plane go into the tower was just unreal. i sat in my room with my door open and called students in as they walked by. those who had been at 8am classes hadn't heard and so they stopped in and watched tv with me. i had one resident whose brother and sister in law both worked at the pentagon and who spent quite a few hours waiting for a phone call. i went to classes that day and my racism prof said he was teaching, because if he didn't then the terrorists won. my english prof had her cell on the table and kind of taught but was anxiously waiting to hear from friends in nyc the whole time. we ended class early. i've never watched so much television in my life. eventually i found some reruns of law and order on. i needed something that wasn't news. i just couldn't see that video again. i didn't know anyone who died on september 11, 2001. for me what is hard about this day is remembering the enormity of death that occured. people were clammoring to give blood because surely with that number of victims we would need tons of blood. there were ambulances ready to take survivors to hospitals. emt's volunteering their time and going to nyc to help out. and then we discovered that most of the victims were dead. it changed from a search and rescue type operation to a body recovery and identification operation. so many people dead, so many people personally affected.

i'll write about classes tomorrow. for today i leave you with this :

A Prayer for Peace
Almighty God, we pray for peace in the world. Help the leaders of all the countries to make good decisions. Help us all to learn to live together and to try to understand each other even though we may seem very different from each other. Remind us when we forget, that we are all your children who share this earthly home. Help us to live in peace and harmony. Amen.

--Prayer written by Rev. Patricia Mitchell