I'm pretty sure no one's ever going to forget that name.

At least no one here in the Philippines will.

The reason why I haven't blogged about my experience with the... thing... that owns that name is because I was scared that I'd make a great big joke out of it, as I do with most things that scare me.

And I didn't want that.

What I want is to respect the death of hundreds of people in our country and to remember it, not as a joke, but for the terrible thing that it was.

And terrible it was.

I was stranded in a bus, for more than eighteen hours, because of the rain. I had to walk through floods and I was soaked right through. I was scared, and though I was with friends, I was worried that I might not see my family, the Turtle, ever again. My phone was already dead and I couldn't tell anyone where I was.

But it wasn't really that, that scared me.

It was the dead bodies that I saw.

I wasn't scared in the I'm-scared-of-dead-people-way, but scared because we were so close to becoming just like them. Scared that I couldn't do anything to help anyone. Scared because they never had a chance against the flood.

I just was so... scared.

Lotsa love, Jana