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TUCSON - A group of about 20 University of Arizona exchange students arrived in Chile one day before the big earthquake.

KVOA spoke with 20-year-old Tucson native Megan Baker over the internet who says she was up late when the ground began to shake.

"I've never experienced an earthquake before so I really didn't know what it was. I felt the bed kind of start to move and I wrote to my brother kind of jokingly that I thought there was an earthquake."

Baker says her host family assured her the house is earthquake proof. "We all huddled under the doorway and it was very frightening."

"Until we heard word that she was okay, I was a wreck," says Marita Gomez. She employs Baker and one other student at Casa Vicente.

"The whole family is going crazy. We're going crazy and I had all the staff calling me saying what's going on? What's happening? How are they doing?"

Gomez says when communication failed, Baker's blog proved to be valuable for family and friends back home. "It was so powerful that we read it. Then I read it to the restaurant."

"They were ready to jump on busses and go to Santiago and help dig people out. They didn't want to hear anything about coming home," says U of A's exchange program director Dr. Malcolm Compitello. "It was a pretty terrifying experience to live through an earthquake, but from what I understand they're doing well. We hope there is nothing else earth shaking about this program."

Meantime Baker's host family encourages people back in the states to keep sending donations to harder hit regions of Chile. "There's not enough glass in the city right now to replace the windows. Everyone's windows went out."

The students will be back in Tucson this summer with one heck of an adventure story to share. "It was definitely an unforgettable experience," says Baker. "It was scary but everything is fine."

Visit Megan Baker's travel blog at http://www.travelpod.com/members/meganb675