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I was at school a few blocks away from World Trade Center when I heard the sound of a jet engine flying overhead followed by a loud explosion and the ringing of a car alarm. My teach went out and soon came back saying, "the whole of the Twin Towers is completely blown away", and then I looked out the window and saw yellow smoke coming from behind a building blocking my view of the WTC and turned on our TV sets to the view of the burning North Tower. A moment later, the school's PA system said (twice), "at 8:45, a small plane crashed into the World Trade Center". Within fifteen minutes, we heard the sound of another set of jet engines, but I did not hear an explosion sound. About an hour later, in another class (when I went to it, my teacher was in the middle of another conversation involving a comparison to the 1945 collision with the Empire State Building), where I could see the burning towers, we heard something on the PA (not very clear) on something regarding the Pentagon, and not long after that, the lights flickered as a small boom sound was heard, and our school building shook. The class ran to the windows and saw a large chunk of one of the towers come down (but we didn't fully realize that that tower had imploded) with a cloud of debris and right below, another school was getting evacuated. We pulled down the shades as the cloud advanced so that debris would send broken glass flying on us in case it hit us with that force, and then we were dismissed as usual. After about and hour of being "detained until further notice" in a north-facing homeroom (and I even heard a rumor about a hijacked JetBlue plane hitting the towers) and seeing lines of people marching northwards along the Hudson, we finally received the order to evacuate. We got out and by then, we could not see either tower--just two pillars of smoke blowing eastwards. We walked north to Chelsea Piers and then we waited there--down there, as the principal said some time later, was "like Mt. Etna". I watched as some students got picked up by their parents and as some teachers took students home, and I decided to join one such group on my own, thinking that my place would be right north enough so that I could get back. Unfortunately I reached the tape and found that I couldn't. I asked about other places in Lower Manhattan where I could go and if people in the apartments had been evacuated, and both answers were positive, so I headed there, where I reunited with the rest of my family. I remember hearing the sound of something collapse (in retrospect, possibly 7 World Trade Center), seeing Midtown dimmed and eventually I went to sleep to the sound of a subway train crossing a bridge. About ten days later, I not was able to return (even though I had to cross many checkpoints) but also was able to go to class at our school, which relocated across the East River. It was three weeks before the school returned to its physical location. It wasn't until about January when that was no longer detectable, either.