Adventures in Typhoons

This is the canal (kind of a sewage canal but sort of cleaner) tree-lined road I walk up and down all the time. In the typhoon, these trees were bent waaay sideways, the canal was full of rushing water, and branches were all over the road.

Um...this is a bottle of lychee fruit wine I took this picture for Michael (this wine smells really really gross and was a gift to a friend of mine but I thought it was funny to see lychee wine)

Sharon and the Giant Mango. this picture also is on my Facebook so most of you have already seen it.

Sorry still not very many pictures. :(

Whoa! First typhoon day in my first week of teaching! Classes have gone better than expected but I was supposed to take my afternoon class, the Bumblebees, to the park to observe ants on Friday. We took them on a school field trip on Thursday afternoon to this children's library place and they were just bouncing off the walls! It's been raining all week so the kids have been penned up inside. So I wasn't looking forward to riding my bike in the rain (again) to work and coming up with a last-minute lesson plan to replace the park idea because it was raining (again) and the kids would be all hyper, but then all classes got cancelled island-wide to the Typhoon Morakot! hip hip hooray! So I had actually no idea what a typhoon really was. Turns out this particular typhoon was 1.) a looot of wind on Friday but very little rain - but so much wind it blew over tree branches and store signs and stuff. 2.) hardly any rain or wind on Saturday but very overcast and kind of eerie, and 3.) a LOT LOT LOT of rain AND wind today! We don't know what's up with the typhoon.

Great Things Taiwan has that they should have in the States too:

1.) Sealed plastic lids on to-go drinks. This is a GREAT idea! They put your drink in this machine that seals a plastic lid on it, then you stick your straw through the lid and you have a practially spill-proof drink! It rocks.

2.) Umbrella covers in store entry ways. A machine you stick your umbrella in and it puts on a plastic umbrella-shaped bag to keep it from dripping in the store. Genius!

3.) In more remote towns closer to the coast, I'm told the houses build metal pull-down walls around them so when a typhoon or whatever is coming they just have to pull down the metal wall thing (like a thin garage door) instead of spending tons of time taping windows and barring doors. Brilliant!

That's my list so far. I'm sure I'll be adding to it in the days to come.