Las Replicas

Approximately 20 minutes ago, as I sat on my bed shamelessly watching Youtube videos before calling it a night, I felt a strong jerk that shook my room. Another replica.
Since arriving in Santiago (about a week after the big 8.3 earthquake), I have felt about five small tremors and one big one. The first few tremors that I experienced did not worry me at all. As I've mentioned, they felt as though I was in an old NYC apartment as the subway passed by.
But after hearing story after story, of people being on the 12th floor and feeling the entire building rock from side to side while the still moon moves in and out of view; or having my professor come in to class saying he didn't sleep at all the night before because of the tremor that awoke him in the night (which then leads him to make constant humorous, relevant, and therapeutical references to earthquakes and his lecture); or being told by several people that another earthquake is bound to happen; or sitting in the Tufts office thinking of how terrifying it would be to experience an earthquake from the 16th floor.
When I first arrived, I was ignorant of all the worry that seismic cultures experience. The idea of another earthquake didn't scare me because it wasn't a fully constructed reality. But now, after speaking with so many nervous people, and living on the unpredictable joints of our planet's body, even my heart began to race when this short and forceful tremor rattled my room's windows.