My First Earthquake After Shock

I was quietly reading a book in our apartment last week when suddenly there was a rushing wind through the mosquito screening, the open windows rattled and then the whole building shook for about 5 seconds if it was a wet dog shaking off water. For a second I did not realise what was happening, then all the neighbours’ dogs started barking and our nepali neighbours all rushed out onto the street. I grabbed my crutches and went to the kitchen where Roger was still continuing to cook our dinner. “don’t worry, it’s just an after shock” he said calmly and went downstairs to calm the neighbours before returning to reassure me that we did not need to do anything else since our go-bag was ready if another shock arrived. He was quite right, there were no more tremors and after a while everyone went back outside. Later, I looked it up on the internet and found it was 4.7 but the epicentre was in our neighbourhood so it felt worse. Tremors like this are still happening every couple of weeks in different parts of Nepal but they are decreasing in intensity and frequency which is reassuring!