the offWhites

So right now I’m experiencing an amalgam of culture shock, illness, sleep deprivation, and abject terror. I’ll address the last of those. We’re at our apartment right now. We came home for lunch, which we don’t typically do, as it’s inconvenient at the moment. We’ve just come back upstairs from *attempting* to go back to work. We noticed a strange sound as we were getting on the elevator, but didn’t think much of it.

When the elevator doors opened on the first floor, smoke rushed in. I yelled, “The building’s on fire, run!” Then I realized I couldn’t see light through the doors eight feet away. I turned to the door around the corner, less than five feet, and I couldn’t see light. Then I realized I was breathing chemicals. We jammed the “close door” button over and over and tried to hold our breath all the way back to the eighth floor.

So now we’re sitting at home. We need to be back at work in a hair under 30 minutes, and we can’t leave the house, because the lobby is tarped for fumigation. We’re both shaking, and though we know we aren’t going to burn alive, it’s still a little nerve-wracking. I’ve just recieved a call from another teacher, though. She and our kindy manager are on their way to try to figure out when the sparying will end. Cross your fingers!