It's hard to believe that another year has gone by and we are at the 7th year anniverary of Sept 11th. I just wanted to write a short something to show my respect for the people who died and the family members who lost people in this terrible attack.
To me, this is one of those moments that you'll NEVER forget where you were at. My parents had the day that Kennedy was shot and Martin Luther King Jr getting shot. Until this day, I didn't really have much. Not that I was wanting something tragic to happen so that I could call that my something.
The morning of this awful day I was living abroad in London. I was living there with a bunch of people I knew and we were all going to Florida State over there. It was around 2 in the afternoon when Jay Sullivan burst into my flat saying that a plane had crashed into the towers. I could hardly believe what he was saying. Up until now, this was only something that you'd see in the movies, not something you'd think could actually happen. Especially not to the US. So a bunch of us ran next door into this flat and we were watching the news. They were showing a replay of the first plane crashing into the building. Then right before our eyes, the second tower went down. All I could think was I felt like I should be home right now. Somehow if being in the US would make me feel better and take away everything that had happened. Soon after this happened, my school called a meeting for all of us that evening so that we could talk about what had happened. I remember soon after watching this on tv, I was walking down the street with Melanie. We were saying that it was so crazy that we were walking on the street as if nothing had happened. Nothing had stopped, nobody was really acting any differently than they were before. I just really wanted to be home. Many of us tried calling our families back here, but nobody could get through on the phone lines. Even for those of us who were calling states that weren't New York, we still couldn't get through. It took several hours before I was able to talk to my family. I always wonder how it would have felt different if I had been in the country during this event. I'm curious how it would have effected me? There were a few people that had family and friends working in the Pentagon and the Trade Center. Luckily, each of those few people had crazy stories of how they were late to work so they never made it or they just didn't make it into work that day. Thank gosh!
So later that evening our school had a meeting for us where they basically told us to tell NOBODY we were American, because at this point we weren't sure if that was a good idea. Therefore, we were supposed to tell people we were from Canada. We were told to not "dress american". No white tennis shoes, no hats with sports teams, and no shirts with sports teams. Nothing that could make us pinpointed in any way as an American. There was a Florida State University emblem hanging outside the University door which they took down that day. This was all so sad. It felt like something changed forever that day, and I still feel that it did. It's not like I felt completely safe back then, but I feel even less safe now. Even though Bush says he's done a lot to "make things safer". I just don't feel it.
Anyway, at Hyde Park, they were having a memorial where you could bring flowers,letter and whatever you wanted basically to set out there for all the fallen people. So I am gonna leave with a few photos of what me and some of my friends did and of some of the thousands of flowers that were put out there. We will never forget....
