It just seems so surreal.
The scenes I have witnessed, the cracks, the buildings, the devastation looks like something you would expect to see overseas, not in little old New Zealand, not in Christchurch.
But it is real. And now everybody is waiting. Every aftershock makes you jump. Everybody is expecting another big one.
When I woke on Saturday morning to the soft tremors of my room on the second storey of the house, it took a few seconds to register.
Then the violent shaking began.
It felt like the two storeys were grinding, trying to get away from each other, moving like opposing magnets.
I live with my grandmother so I called out to Nana to get in a doorway. The quake lasted a good few minutes and I went into auto-mode.
"Do you have a torch? A battery powered radio? Anything?" I asked.
Nothing. With no power, no light, I suddenly realised how important it was to be prepared. It was pitch black and I expected strong aftershocks to follow within minutes, so I felt my way around the house, removing anything I thought might break or fall.
We live in the seaside suburb of New Brighton and cars were heading towards the beach and others were leaving the area. People had only one thing on their mind tsunami.
The aftershocks came, but not as strongly as I expected. My Nana was set up on a stool in the doorway, her duvet wrapped around her. It was freezing. With pyjamas, dressing gown, jacket and two duvets around me I don't ever remember being as cold as I was that morning.
When all seemed to have stopped we relocated into the lounge, waiting for daylight.
I have never been so pleased to see daybreak.
By that stage, I had found out from friends the quake was 7.4 on the Richter scale (it was later downgraded to 7.1) with an epicentre 40km west of Christchurch.
My aunt in Kaiapoi texted me about the mudslides and flooding they were facing there. My parents also had damage to their property.
We, in New Brighton, had been lucky.
The neighbours turned up within minutes of daybreak to check up on Nana. They told us the Bridge St bridge had collapsed and the central business district was destroyed.
By 8am, I was heading out to check the damage.
Bridge St was blocked off but pedestrians were everywhere. I was amazed at the number of people walking their young children and dogs over the badly damaged bridge, which, it turned out had not collapsed.
Neighbours were standing on the road, comparing stories. Teenagers were gathered along the metre-deep cracks, talking about how they could break the concrete off just by standing on it.
A woman and her elderly mother who fled because of the tsunami risk spoke of their shock at realising they had driven over the badly cracked bridge in the dark just 20 minutes after the quake.
Despite the damage, people were relatively upbeat. I spoke to several people who had already travelled a good part of the city and were now in South Brighton to see the damage here. They told me of a petrol station which had moved up a metre, flooding around a new subdivision near Travis Wetlands, damage to the CBD and Merivale and all sorts of things.
One man compared the disaster with that of Biblical times, and the natural disasters referred to in the book of Revelation, saying this was only the beginning and we could expect a lot more in the times to come.
Everyone had cameras. Everywhere I went that day people had cameras. A lot of people posed with the damage and I imagine as soon as power was restored those photos went up on social networking sites like Facebook. This was history in the making and everyone wanted their own little record of it.
I then travelled to Wainoni and saw the silt build-up there. People were chatting to each other over fences. Men were out with shovels and wheelbarrows trying to clear the gutters.
One guy I spoke to very cheerily asked if I wanted any silt for my garden, as apparently, it makes for good compost.
"I think I'm going to sell it," he said, digging deep into the gutter to show just how much there was.
Already, people were making the most of a bad situation, displaying that "she'll be right" attitude New Zealanders seem to have.
This area suffered a lot of flooding, yet streams of cars were driving through, drivers and passengers taking photos as they went along.
I was surprised to see a woman holding her daughter in the middle of the road, laughing as cars drove past splashing the pair.
In the CBD, the happy-go-lucky attitude had disappeared and, instead, a more intense and distressed vibe filled the air.
Walking towards the police cordon, you could see brick buildings coming apart. One abandoned building in particular which will be on the "to demolish" list had a couple of teenagers and children standing outside it.
"You live in this area?" I asked.
The eldest of the children responded very aggressively, angry that media had been around filming the building, angry that people had been taking photos of it, angry that their home had been destroyed.
For these street kids, the building had been their shelter, and for us, not as badly affected by the quake, I guess it was hard to relate to just how it felt to lose everything.
To them, it seemed people cared or were more interested in the building itself, not the people living inside it.
At the police cordon, a few people were watching what was happening. One woman begged an officer to let her in to check her business, but it was deemed too unsafe.
The officer I spoke to said he had dealt with a few aggressive people, verbally abusing him, desperate to get in.
"This has ruined my weekend," he said, calmly.
By 11.30am we were in the upmarket suburb of Merivale. I had been living on adrenalin and had not really thought about the things I had seen that morning.
We stopped to see what a small crowd of people were looking at and found the Methodist Church there cordoned off. Parts of the magnificent red brick building had come tumbling down. A huge slab of concrete had fallen on the church van, absolutely destroying it. That is when the realisation of the damage this earthquake had done started to hit.
Heading to Kaiapoi, a small town in the Waimakariri District just 15 minutes from Christchurch, I knew I would be faced with more destruction. Kaiapoi is said to be the second-worst affected place behind the Selwyn district.
The mood in Kaiapoi was different again. People were still out and about with their cameras, walking their dogs, talking to friends, but it seemed the effect of the quake was only just starting to hit.
"This happened in two minutes," one man said looking over the car park at the back of the Kaiapoi Club, which had subsided a metre into the earth.
"Just goes to show, never underestimate the power of nature."
Everyone acts differently in these situations, and for the children, the bumpy and cracked car park made for good BMXing and skateboarding.
The town centre had been cordoned off, and as I stood by Blackwells department store, a shop that has been on that site since 1921 and a family business that has been running since 1871, a community watch volunteer guarding it told me it would be demolished that afternoon.
Kaiapoi residents seemed devastated at what was going to happen.
"It's such a shame," an elderly woman told me.
"This is a Kaiapoi icon, a Kaiapoi family. It truly is devastating."
"With Blackwells gone, another building further down looks to be demolished, and part of the Kaiapoi walkway also destroyed, this town is never going to be the same again," another man said.
It was not until about 5pm that Blackwells was demolished. About 100 or so people turned out to watch, youngsters cheering each time the digger took a hit at the building.
It was a sad day for Kaiapoi indeed.
Throughout Saturday night we had many strong aftershocks. My two younger cousins and I shared a room at my grandmother's house, and within minutes of turning the light off the room began to sway and shake.
Yesterday, the aftershocks were still happening, some bigger ones that really shook the house.
The sky is eerily still. A storm is coming.
We are waiting, expecting.
- Tania Butterfield is a reporter for the Pegasus Bay News, near Christchurch.
