Dances, Fires, and Evacuations! Oh My!

Yes, as you may have been able to gather from the title of the post, my life over the past couple of days has been interesting, weird, crazy, exciting and in general just a big pain. On Saturday night we had the Junior-Freshman dance. It started out with a bang, namely, the entertainment. That was immensely fun and amusing for reasons much too complicated to explain here. After that came the dancing. It was going really well (i.e., I was dancing almost every dance), and everyone was having a great time. Until about 10:30. Dun dun dun.... So at about that time, the swing song that was playing stopped suddenly and without warning, and the dean came up and took over the microphone. He said that the humidity had dropped and the winds had picked up, and the fire was now very close to us, so we were going to evacuate. So, at 11:00 last night all the dorms were in an uproar as people were packing, closing windows, turning off lights, calling parents, and organizing rides to the church which was our evacuation site (it was Sacred Heart Church in Saticoy, about 15 minutes from the school). My room-mate and her brother had a car on campus, so I hitched a ride with them. On the way out, we got run down by the TV and newspaper reporters and were interviewed. That was cool, in a way, but in another way I was just really wanting to hit the road and that was delaying things. Eventually we got rid of them and set out. We got to the church at about midnight. Upon pulling into the parking lot we could look out (the church was on sort of high ground) and see in the distance the flames leaping up from the tops of the hills. It was rather scary. Eventually the whole school got there and everyone had to check in and fill out Red Cross forms and that caused a big hubbub. My room-mate lives in Orange County, which is around 2 hours south of the college, and so after we got through at the church about 12 people from the college, including me, went down to her house to stay. We're still here as of now (Sunday evening). Obviously there's no school tomorrow, and I don't really know when we're going to be able to go back. I hope it's soon, because I already miss the campus. It already feels like home to me.

Well, that's pretty much what's up in my life lately. I hope you all are doing better than I am. ;)

Update: We're all safely back here now at the college, and have been since yesterday (Monday) afternoon. Everyone is okay, and nothing got harmed in any way. As far as I can tell, the fire didn't even make it over the top of the big hill that's up behind the campus to the north. So thanks for all the prayers. :)