I’m walking to breakfast on the sunny coast of Tenerife Island

when I notice a muted television in a hotel lobby projecting a news report about Chile. I stop to watch, having lived and worked in coastal Chile for 7 years--- I consider it my adopted homeland. The news is frantic and sensationalist and I am immediately crestfallen as I silently learn that late last night, a massive 8.8 earthquake struck the south-central coast of Chile - triggering a series of 20-foot tsunamis and devastating hundreds of miles of coastline and small cities exactly where I used to live and work. My heart drops and my chest tightens. I am suddenly chilled and feel very far from home.