Unexpected

Today started out just like any other. On my walk to school, I admired the mountain. I even stopped and took a picture of it! 

I got to school at 7:10, had a morning prayer meeting with my fellow teachers, and by 7:30, I was back in my classroom preparing for my day. At 7:42 I got a text from my boyfriend asking if the mountain was erupting. I was like, "What?? No? WHY??" He was eating breakfast in town and snapped this picture:

That would be on the OTHER side of our mountain. So I went outside to look and saw this:

You see all that ash through those trees? Anyways, I sounded the alarm (not literally) and unintentionally sent the administration into a panic. They suddenly wanted to shut down the school. I said that was probably not necessary. We are very protected by our mountain, Merbabu. The one erupting is the one behind it, Merapi. The only possible danger we are in is receiving ash fall. We're still waiting to see which way the wind blows. 

Of course, homeroom was a joke this morning. The 7:45 bell rang within one minute of all of us realizing there was a volcano erupting 15 miles away. Just about all the students whipped out their cell phones (which they are not allowed to use at school) to take pictures, and nobody would go in their classrooms. It was chaos. Eventually we got everyone corralled. 

We contacted the head of Volcanology and Meteorology on Merapi, and the guy there said this was a "normal" eruption and there is "no status" there. The scary thing about this is that at 7 AM the same department posted on Twitter that all activity was normal. Forty-five minutes later, there was a relatively large eruption. Which means that nobody evacuated. My greatest concern is for the residents of Mount Merapi and all of the ash that is undoubtedly falling on them. No matter what the volcanologist says, this is NOT normal activity for around here. 

It is now 8:30 AM. School is still in session, but administration has declared it a half day, just in case of any further volcanic activity. We are also getting face masks ready for all students and staff. Better to have a contingency plan now than to have to create one in the moment. We have all windows and doors closed, which means that I am currently locked in a room with 25 middle schoolers and no ventilation. We are baking as they prepare for their Geometry exam. 

So the theme of the day is spontaneity and flexibility. When a volcano erupts, we do what we gotta do. 

For the past 45 minutes, my fingers have been itching to go home and get my camera to take some good quality pictures of the eruption. But since I have back-to-back classes all day, that can't happen. The best picture I got is the one I posted earlier. So instead, I'll leave you with a photo I took from a local news outlet's website.