A short five-minute walk around the corner from our house, and on the same street as my son's school is the Colegio Enrique Rébsamen school, the building that collapsed and has had such a tragic loss of life of both students and teachers. My son, Mateo played with some of the children from this school during summer camp earlier in the year. We are still trying to find out if all of his summer camp friends are ok. He is sadly still very much recalling what happened on Tuesday morning. He refused to sleep in the house on Tuesday night, so he and I slept in the car. We are still mainly living on the ground floor, sprawled between the living room, dining room and office.
For the past week, my wife and I have been taking it in turns to sleep in a tent in the front garden with our eldest son. I think it is helping him in that this is something different and new, and something he can focus on as opposed to thinking of that terrible day. He still has no school as the county is reviewing all buildings and their earthquake preparedness in light of the heartbreaking situation at the Colegio Enrique Rébsamen school. He still has his moments where he feels less than secure and wonders if the ground is moving under him. To be fair, so do I.