前不久，我家乡遭受了龙卷风的狂烈袭击，损失很严重

There are three ways to get on my black list—which is not a pleasant place to be.  An easy and automatic jump to the top of the list comes from waking me up from a sound sleep.  There is only one exception:  my sister has the right to text me night or day, whenever she so chooses.  So when I woke up at 6:30am to the evil sound of my cell phone my first instinct was blind rage.  Then I saw that the message was from Sammie, "There are tornados on the ground.  Woo hoo."  I wrote her back and asked where she was, to which she responded with a picture of her with Hitomi and Reiko (two of my best friends).  I don't know if she was trying to make me jealous or reassure me that she was okay.  Since tornadoes and Oklahoma go together like eggs and tomatoes I wasn't worried enough to stay awake.

When I finally dragged myself out of bed later that morning I read the news and saw that my hometown, Norman, got pretty torn up.  The tornado crossed the highway about a mile from where my parents live right now, leaving 5 dead and destroying lots of trees and houses.  I called my parents and they said they were fine, and nothing had been damaged at our house.  It's tornado season back home, which means that the sky regularly turns that sick, greenish color and everything gets really still in late afternoon.  By evening the lightening is gearing up for a grand show and the rain pours forth out of pent up frustration.  Soon sirens are going off and all the regular TV shows have been postponed due to continuous weather updates.  It's such a common occurrence that the typical response is to go outside and try to spot the funnel (I didn't say Oklahomans were particularly bright).  Call me crazy but I miss the intensity of those storms.  It's a lot more fun than an all-day drizzle.

Today I was taking a nap after my 8 o'clock class when I was awoken by another text from my sister.  Grumbling that she was starting to push the limits of her anger-immunity I noticed that this one was a little more urgent.  My parents have been trying to build a house just outside of town for a few years now.  We have a storage shed on the land, where I've been storing all the things I didn't sell or give away when I moved to China.  The good news is, if I've lived without it for two years, chances are I'll be just fine without it for the rest of my life.  The bad news is I'm going to have to be.   The storage shed is now upside down and across the land.  All the trees are on the ground, except for the one across my dad's truck.  I don't know yet if anything can be rescued from the shed but I'm mostly grateful my parents hadn't yet moved out there.

"I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all.  But what I placed in God's hands, that I still possess."
-Martin Luther