Shaking up Costa Rica: My Earthquake Experience

Today was a scary day.

Halfway through my 7am class the building started to tremble. Costa Rica will get occasional tremors, but when my classmates started to become concerned I realized something probably wasn't right. The little "tremor" turned out to be a ground shaking earthquake.

This is how everything played out... (Everything seemed like it happened so fast and some details are fuzzy, but for the most part this was my experience):

The building literally started to move. My classmates repeatedly tried my professor (who didn't seem to want to stop talking) that the ground was moving. She didn't pay attention until their cries became more concerned; this is when it became obvious to me that what was happening wasn't normal. The next part happened so quickly in my mind... the ground's movements changed from a light shaking to a vigorous shake. A scary shake. All at once everyone started to head to the door. My professor screamed, grabbed her stuff and ran. It was a moment of panic. It was like my body was on autopilot. In my memory, I somehow made it from my chair on the other side of the classroom to the door in one sweeping motion. Once outside of the door everything became surreal; everyone was rushed, yet it feels like everything was happening slowly. Out of instinct, I power walked to the stairs I walk up to get to my class on the 2nd floor of the building (I remember someone yelling "Don't run! Don't run!" in the background). The lights flickered and then remained off. Walking through the sea of frightened people, my memory is vague; I remember walking toward the light from outside and passing two girls holding each other's shoulders. Wether I was conscious of this or not, I remember feeling an imminent sense of something bad... I was waiting for the ceiling above my head to crash on to me. The building was moving so forcefully, I felt like I was having trouble keeping my balance. Finally I emerged through the door of an emergency exit with a group of people clustered like cattle.
The outside lights seemed so bright. I couldn't seem to suck enough fresh air into my lungs. I didn't realized how bad my hand were shaking or how fast my heart was beating until I had made it out of the building. That was one on the scariest experiences of my life.

Finally safe I could try to evaluate what had just happened. Everyone around me was for lack of a better term, freaking out. My recount of the story doesn't do the situation justice, but I thought I'd share it anyway.
They shut the building down for the rest of the day to be evaluated for structural damage.
I later found out that I had survived a 7.6 on the Richter scale, 12.4 mile long earthquake. I'd say that's good enough for one day... classes were canceled for the rest of the day.

Here are some links about the earthquake:
Map
Earthquake Information
Powerful Earthquake Reported in Costa Rica