My school is equipped with TV's in every single classroom. At 8:42, or whatever time it was, I was in my English class, which looked out onto the World Trade Center. Ironically, our teacher never showed up that day to English (we later found out that he was on a plane in Hong Kong bound for New York), and no substitute showed up. We were in the room by ourselves. After hearing the initial sound, we ran to the window, where we saw smoke coming out of the WTC. Since our view in this particular room was partially obstructed, we initially thought that a small two-passenger plane had crashed into the tower. I remember my classmates and I laughing. "Who could be such an idiot as to fly his little plane in the WTC?" But as we flipped on the news from our classroom TV, the laughing gradually stopped. And as we watched the live feed, the silence melted into shrieks as yet another plane flew into the tower. I felt sick to my stomach. We ran to the window, and sure enough, a glance outside confirmed that this was not an isolated, obscure event. This was two blocks away, and it was serious. I don't know how, but we sensed right then that our lives were soon to be very different.