Storm Post

August 7-9, 2009 (Friday, Saturday, Sunday)

Ok, I'm done with the food posts for now. I am not a pig, seriously ~-^
Well, the typhoon is going crazy. The wind is really strong and the small puddles from the rain that were in the hall are now...bigger puddles. There's a screen door right where the puddle is and rain is blowing in from outside. I want to go see how deep the puddle is but if it keeps raining I'll probably be able to find out sooner or later once it comes to our door. It's been raining nonstop since the typhoon started. Xue Lan told us the raining and typhoon would probably continue for a few more days, so I'm not sure of the status of class Monday, but the storm will probably have died down by then.

The President of TUSA got everyone in the dorm MacDonald’s food on Saturday and Jackie Chang (who writes to the students to make sure they’re doing OK and grades the culture journals we’ve been writing) ordered everyone in the dorm boxed meals for dinner. There were boxes of MacDonald’s stuff and bags of boxed lunches...they went to a lot of trouble because they got all the food during a typhoon and I really want to thank them somehow. I was kind of speechless when I saw that they’d gotten all the food for everyone. I bought food on Thursday to eat through the typhoon and didn’t know they’d get everyone meals. I’m grateful that they did, don’t get me wrong. I also hope that the people who delivered it were OK since the wind and rain were really bad.

I just went for a walk (Sunday 5:23) and saw that a lot of tree branches had fallen down, some trees were tipped over or their branches were cracked. One of the things that was damaged a lot was the roof over the scooter garage just outside of the dorms; the end of it fell forward and is touching the ground, blocking some of the scooters and bikes that were under it, and the next section bowed in the middle (a better way might be to say that it slumped forward after part of it fell and hit the ground) but the rest of the roof is still straight. It’s easier to show than explain but I don’t really feel like I should take pictures of the destruction.

It’s still a little windy and it was raining when I went back inside. A long time before I went outside for the first time since the typhoon started there were people walking around, riding bikes, scooters, and driving cars. I saw a couple people flying a kite like I’ve seen them doing in normal weather although...Taiwan usually has lots of typhoons...so I guess it’s still normal weather now.

Well dinner boxes were delivered for supper and I just finished mine. Instead of staying in my room I watched TV with some American and Taiwan students. I’m glad I hung out with them since I’ve been a recluse this weekend. Earlier a few people ate lunch in the student lounge and played Mah-jongg while watching Wall-E. I left partway through and took a rest but that was fun. People asked if I wanted to play Mah-jongg but I said no; I know the very basic rules and it's fun but I just wanted to watch. For any kind of game, I sometimes space out, and I felt like I'd be doing a lot of spacing out if I played. Watching was fun too.

The Mah-jongg set they were using was probably one of the sets people won in the Mah-jongg competition Thursday.

Well, it was a lot shorter than before, but I’m going to finish writing now. I finished my homework on Thursday and finished my slideshow for the Talent Show yesterday; I just need to make sure the timing is right and the captions stay on the right slides or else it won’t make sense. I uploaded the video on Youtube to show it to people and the caption order changed; if it stays on my computer and isn’t uploaded it probably (hopefully) won’t happen for the actual talent show. I hope I can get some footage of the Talent Show for you guys, as well as the skit my group’s doing if I won’t be on the stage for everything. Megan, Serge, and Annie (we were on the same home stay together) and I are in a group together and they have really good ideas. It’s fun how creative they are; I think we’ll have a good show because of them. They liked my slide show but I like their ideas a lot. Everything we did will make it neat a good performance.

Well, that’s it for now. Until next time.