Mais c'est une rumeur!

So, Moroccans (and I generalize grossly here) have heard that a tsunami is going to hit here, oh, sometime tomorrow. I hadn't heard this at all, and then two days ago Hind (from, as you may remember, across the alley) comes over and wants to look on the internet for tsunami information. She was saying something about its being for a school presentation, but also about its being because she had heard that a tsunami was going to hit on Thursday.

I dismissed that, but then yesterday I came home and the Moroccan kid the new housemate Jessica was tutoring was talking about the tsunami as well ...

I tried to convince both of them that tsunamis, as far as I'm aware, having taken an entire semester of a class about seismic retrofitting at the UC Berkeley campus, require an earthquake, and that earthquakes can't be predicted like that.

They didn't believe me.

Then this evening, I went and visited my host family, and my host mom asked me if I was worried at all.
About what, I asked her.
Don't you know?
No, what?
The tsunami.

Sheesh.

So I left, and I went and watched the fireworks display over the Oudaya today that they put on to celebrate the ending of a music festival. It was pretty spectacular, with lasers pointing at the ground, and at us, and with fireworks going off both over the river and over the ocean.

The waves did seem somewhat high tonight, come to think of it ...