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#1323 | Monday, May 27th 2002
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I was 29 years old, renting a guest house in Tempe, Arizona. My alarm should have gone off at 6am so that I could get to the school where I taught music at by 7:30am for Cafeteria duty. I had stayed up late the night before and dind't hear my alarm go off that morning. I remember waking up an seeing the clock say 8:30 am. "Crap!" I said to myself. My first class of the day was starting at that very moment, and I was a good 30 minutes away from even being able to get there. I called the teacher of the class that I was supposed to be teaching at 8:30 and told him I had overslept. He said, "that's ok, just call me when you get to school, and be careful on your way." Be careful on my way? I thought that was strange of him to say. Just as I was throwing on my clothes, the owner of the house yelled in a very paniced voice, "Planes have hit the World Trade Center!". I had never heard him speak in that tone before. I grabbed my school bag and ran out into the living room where the TV was. I was still half asleep and I saw images of the towers on fire. I thought they were live images, but it was already around 11:30 am in New York. I didn't really comprehend everything until I jumped in my car and drove to work.... still worried about being late. The radio stations were talking a mile a minute, spitting out details and info... something about the Vice President in hiding, the Pentagon was hit, the White House was a target, thousands of people dead, and on and on. I drive by the Phoenix airport to get to work and there was a huge trafic jam. The airport had shut down and people were honking, couldn't get in etc. I stayed at school the rest of the day. The principal told us not to go into detail with the children. Some of the kids in the morning classes wanted to talk about it, but as the day went on, it seemed like a normal day. I wanted to watch TV but couldn't. I just wanted to go over to my parents house and stay with them. I still didn't know all of the details of what had happened. Our faculty meeting was cancelled after school and we were urged to go home immediatly. That night, I called my family and friends and we just watched the news the whole night in shock. I was so scared. For the first time since I was a little girl, I was afraid to turn off the light and go to bed. The next morning when I woke up, for a moment I thought it had been a dream,a nightmare. I prayed that it had been. I didn't want to turn on the TV but I had to. Every channel showed a live picture from NYC, a beautiful sunrise with smoke filling the sky. On the way to and from work that next day, people were so nice to eachother on the road. Phoenix is known for it's road rage, but on that morning and evening, people in their cars were so nice to eachother, letting others pass, smiling, etc... Everyone I saw for a few weeks following 9/11 had a look of sadness on their faces.
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Carolyn | 30 | Arizona
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#1309 | Thursday, May 23rd 2002
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After quite some time of jobhunting, I had finally signed a contract with a company in Paris, only a matter of days before the attack. I could not yet start working, since my boss was going to New York for some business-meetings.
On this particular day, I was browsing a supporter forum for devoted AIK fans (AIK is a soccer club from Stockholm, Sweden) when all of a sudden I came across a message like no other I'd seen before. It said something like "a missile has hit one of the WTC buildings - turn on CNN". So I did turn it on, and just moments after I saw the second plane hit.
In a blink of an eye, my whole world had gone from bright and shiny, to completely pointless. What was this? Why did it happen? How could it happen? After just staring at the horrid pictures for a few moments, I called my brother, girlfriend and parents. I couldn't believe this was happening and I was in a complete state of shock. I spent the next 24-48 hrs on the phone in front of the TV. I have never been so scared in my life and all I could think of was the fact that I was thousands of kilometers away from all of this, but there were millions of people right in the middle of it. I tried to imagine the panic, the horror and the grief that the people of N.Y, Washington and the rest of the U.S must have felt. I don't think my imagination is great enough to have even come close.
Nobody will ever forget this tragic day, and I hope that one day, we will also remember the day when the violence ended and the purportrators were brought to justice - will that ever happen?
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Jesper | 30 | France
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#1296 | Sunday, May 19th 2002
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The morning of September 11, I was sleeping with my chidren beside me and the phone rang waking us up. My sister-in-law Heather had been watching the news and saw the tragity unfold before her eyes. She called us immediatley after the second plane hit. Af first I could not understand what she was saying she was so upset. Finally I turned on the TV and watched in horror. It was difficult to keep my 6 & 8 year old children from seeing it(every channel played the scenes over and over). After a while, after some of the shock started to wear a little, I sat down and tried to explain to them what was happeing. The very tragic part of it all, was when they heard about the firemen missing. (their father is a Firefighter/paramedic for Cape Girardeau MO) At first it did not seem as though it was effecting them, until they ask if their daddy was going to New York to help find the people lost and missing.Every day after 9-11 they would ask if he would come home again from the fire Dept.,afraid he wouldn't because of the events they seen and heard. I reassured them the best I could and told them to have faith in the Lord and he would help to bring him home saftely. These are the foremost thoughts in my mind, from the day the world changed.
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Mindy | 30 | Missouri
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#1270 | Monday, May 13th 2002
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My husband, Vivek and I were in Moscow on 11th September, 2001. We were staying with a friend and had gone to pick him up from his office. He came out, a shocked expression on his face and handed out a printout of an internet news download. It showed a sketch of the World Trade Centre, with an aereoplane lodged into it!! At first it sounded too ridiculous to be true. But as we read on, we were absolutely shell shocked....
Our thoughts went out to all those thousands of people trapped inside the buildings. We rushed home to catch the latest news on television. The next few days were a nightmare as more and more news of the terrible tragedy came in...
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Aparna | 30 | India
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#1247 | Thursday, May 2nd 2002
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I remember that day as it was clear as a bell. It was around 9:ooam in the morning for me and my boss phones me about something and then he tells me that the WTC is being attacked! I got out of bed , sat on the end of it and wondered, what in.... then I quickly turned on CNN and just stared at the TV. I phoned everyone that I could , it was like being in a really bad science fiction movie. It was my day off so there wasn't really much for me to do. I sort of wondered around in a daze all day, looking above the sky to see what planes might fly by. I'm glad my parents were in Europe at the time as they normally live in Comox which is a military Air force town, and thought oh no, what if they get bombed or something. Yes Paranoid thoughts have passed my mind during that time....I felt so numb all day, staring at the tv or any tv in any coffee shop I could get to, someone brought a portable tv with a dish attenae into the Chapters book store and we watched that for most of the afternoon. Later on was the first night of my choir, we sang beautiful pieces, I prayed as I sang for the people in Manhattan, I will never ever forget that day, I still think of it every day.
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suzanne | 30 | Canada
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