Earthquake in Christchurch

Since my mountain biking trip got cancelled this weekend due to the 7.1 magnitude earthquake I thought I'd write about it instead. It occurred at 4:35am in the morning, the epicenter was 30 km west of the city. I was actually already awake- I woke up at 3:30 am with nausea and vomiting that ceased right after the earthquake ended. It could have been the one-hour flu, but I think it was my body anticipating the earthquake- ha ha! Anyways, we got under the doorway to our bedroom when it started. Everything was shaking for several minutes- and afterward there were several aftershocks that felt really strong. The weird part was that you could hear them coming in the distance. We are still getting aftershocks now, many hours later. There was no visible damage to our house or belongings. Some stuff fell over and the power went out for about 6 hours, but that was it. The city is under a state of emergency though, and the damage to the city center was fairly substantial. There were a few injuries, but luckily nobody was killed. It's a good thing the building standards are so high!