9-11

[crazycanuck]

We were living in Auckland at the time. I remember waking up, turning on the internet to read the BBC & saw the reports.. I thought..eh?? No freakin way..OH!

I woke Ian up & he said " nah".. I said " Ya"

I was confused when I went to work that day & heard some of the comments from my overseas students. (I was teaching english at the time)

[Aggie_Ama]

When I was still at A&M I was assigned to write news articles for class on various speeches given on campus. I got to sit in on a speech from our Corps leader, Lt. John Van Alystyne, he described being in the Pentagon that day. It was the two year anniversary (or around) when I listened to him speak and yet the stoic career military man had trouble keeping his emotions at bay. It was powerful, horrifying and emotional to hear him speak of it. The vivid details of the feeling of the flames around the corner, the description of the burning flesh smell and the screams of the injured was the stuff of nightmares to listen to and hard to stomach. I remember crying for much of his speech while taking notes.

I remember thinking I wasn't worthy of telling his story in my assignment and wanting to do it justice. It ended up being one of my best grades in the class and one of the pieces I was extremely proud of for writing.

Growing up my parents talked about where they were when Kennedy was killed or where they were when Charles Whitman opened fire on the UT campus. When the Challenger disaster occured it left an impact on me I still remember even though I was a pre-schooler that day but it doesn't evoke the emotion the photos of those towers can. At first when I watched the news in class I didn't realize it would be my "I remember where I was when...." moment but I can remember the sun sparkling through the oaks of campus, where I was sitting in Reed McDonald, sitting in my first apartment and being late to work because I was watching the news.

[mimitabby]

we were in Italy. Stopped into a hotel to use their bathroom.
When I came out of the bathroom, some men came up to us.
"Siete Americani?"(are you americans?) they led us to the TV in the lobby. I thought it was a horror movie. Of course, it was all in Italian. one tower was still up.. We watched as the second one collapsed! we drove back to my cousin's house with the car radio on, trying to hear the english behind the italian, and being fairly clueless, as it is very hard to understand newscasters speaking another language, they talk SO FAST. At my cousin's house, there was the same news reel, this time with 6 people talking in Italian. It sure brought us down to earth fast. It changed the tone of our vacation, we realized at that point that we REALLY didn't want to come back home.

we were so blown away by it all that we left our rental car unlocked in the town plaza and ended up with it getting towed away because someone tried to break into it and no one could re-lock the door without a key... what a mess.