Typhoon!

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Today I experienced my first typhoon!

It actually started Sunday night--I left the building I was in and noticed that it was really hazy, like from bad pollution or a forest fire. I got a call from a friend later in the evening and he suggested I stay in--until then I hadn't noticed, but the whole sky had darkened and there was more or less constant lightening. A little later it started to pour. Yesterday, when I woke up, it was still hazy (though it had stopped raining), so I thought to check the weather and discovered that we were indeed going to be hit by some sort of tropical storm. My big, bright yellow umbrella came in handy, as right around lunchtime, it started to pour again. By the time it stopped, the wind had picked up and was seriously gusting. When I came back to my apartment after my Chinese lesson, I discovered that the whole block had a power outage (it actually came back on right as I was coming into the building). The storm continued into the night, with HUGE gusts of wind and downpours.

This morning, by the time I woke up, it seemed things had settled down, though apparently it was raining so hard at 6am that you couldn't even see a foot in front of you. In any case, the city canceled school for the day (though certain of our classes were held, since all of the students live on campus). I had to go in anyway, to have a police interview (the final step in my residence permit application process!), and the walk to school was very strange. Normally our street is ALWAYS busy (even until 3 or 4 in the morning), and today there were barely any people, and most of the shops were shut. It is interesting how I've become so used to the number of people crowding the streets that when things are less busy, what might be normal in an American city, it seems unusually quiet.

There were a few downpours the rest of the day, but really it was pretty mild. I was rather unimpressed, though I guess the storm just barely hit us. The main drama of the day was what happened at school, though you will have to subscribe to my private blog to read that!

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Comments

[Viv]

Glad to see you are enjoying (???) some exciting moments---but did it have to be a typhoon??? Well--- the Margolis line is seriously weather phobic. Perhaps you will teach us a new way..... Love, Aunt Vivi