story3282.xml

story3282.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I was coming back from my 10:30 class that morning and I could tell that something wrong had happened. As I walked onto my floor a girl ran out of her room and started screaming that the U.S. was under attack. I didn't even listen to her at first because she had always been a little strange but out of curiosity I went to my room and turned on the tv. And there it was, on every station. The World Trade Center had been hit and I think by that time the Pentagon had been hit too. I dropped to floor. My cousin lived four or five blocks from the World Trade Center and my uncle's company was the company working on the Pentagon at the time. A lot of my family works for his company and my heart dropped. I got up from the floor and ran to my phone trying to call my mom. Being from Philadelphia, all I could think of is that I wanted to go home. No one could get through though and I can just remember hearing nothing but the news coming from every room on the floor. My roommate came in and asked what happened and all I could do was point to the tv. My whole body was numb. Then we heard about another plane that had crashed in Somerset, Pa. Our school is about an hour or so away from Somerset but a lot of people knew that area very well and more panic seemed to spread because no one knew what to do with themselves. It was impossible to call out on the phones so you had nothing else to do but to sit and watch the terror on tv. Our phone did rang once though which helped take us away for a brief moment and it turned out to be my exchange student from the Ukraine. She heard about what happened on the news and called me as soon as possible because she heard about the plane hitting Pa and thought that was our area. I told her I was fine but then she started to cry even harder than she already was and said to me "How could anyone want to do something so horrible to such a beautiful country?!" I told her that everything would be alright and that we all would be strong. After I got off of the phone with her I began to cry myself for the uncertain feeling I had about my family. I heard from my mom the next day and she said that everyone had been ok. We were very blessed but my heart went out even farther for those families that had lost loved ones. Our school had a candle light vigil the next day and if you looked around, all you could see were people, coming together to be strong together and to be loving together. I know none of us will forget this day because it's not only a day of a terrible loss, but it's the day that we became one as a nation.