After the Typhoon

So over the weekend, everyone here was really busy preparing for the typhoon (which passed south of Hualien, so we were safe). On Saturday, we were tying everything on the playground down and moving as much stuff inside as we could so that if there were strong winds, it wouldn't be blown all over the place. On Sunday night, I stayed with the family of one of the kids I tutor. They were kind enough to take me in so I wouldn't be alone and terrified if the typhoon hit our house. Actually the apartment Steph and I stay in probably wouldn't last long in a typhoon, but the concrete school below it could, so if I needed to, I could have moved down there. Truth be told, I wasn't really nervous, more curious and excited. I've never been in a typhoon. One of the elder missionaries told me that's exactly how he was during his first typhoon. He and his companion were staying in a house with tiny windows that they were always trying to look out of to get a glimpse outside.

Steph was staying with a family that she knows really well, so I locked up everything and turned off the gas before I left. Our gas tank is outdoors, so if the wind blew the tank away while the gas was on, we would lose all of it! Me and the teenager I tutor talked during the evening and swapped pictures from America and Malaysia, where she had been during a family vacation. The resort she stayed at was a "Club Med" resort, and trust me when I say it sounded relatively cheap and amazing. When i get back to the states, I'll have to convince my folks to take a vacation there.

So the typhoon came and went during the night. I slept like a rock, but I guess the wind and rain couldn't have been too terrible. Still, because it's been raining with few breaks, the fields all around the city are flooded. I can't imagine what that is going to do to the crops. What kind of things do the farmers around here have to do to recover from really big storms?

I took a long walk after I got back home and found a biking trail up by the mountains. The clouds looked so cool that I wanted to just keep walking and look at everything! But...lemme tell you about a couple of inconveniences I've experienced while being here:

1) No trash cans. Or at least, very few. In America, there's a trash can on just about every corner. Not so much, here. There are recycling bins around the 7-Elevens and Family Marts, but most of the time, you have to carry your trash around for ages until you find something.\

2) Where the heck are the bathrooms?! I was trying to find one during my walk, and I asked around (in Chinese, yay!) where I could find one, but there weren't any in the restaurants or 7-Elevens! What do the workers do if they have to go to the bathroom? Are there bathrooms in the Buddhist temples? The preschool has lots of bathrooms, but that's understandable since we can expect the kids to have bladders the size of walnuts!

Oh well, I'm still enjoying everything else there is to experience here. I took a couple videos of the waves when they were getting really high along the shoreline. I will try and post them here. There were guards everywhere and they had blocked off the paths to get to the ocean. These people don't fool around!

Sometimes when you walk around, you'll notice paw prints in the concrete. Taiwan has a ton of stray dogs. I think that some of them may have walked through the concrete after it was poured and was still fresh.

The clouds after the typhoon.
This dog started following me during my walk. It broke my heart because I wanted to pet it but it was wet and probably filthy. Poor thing. :(
Our rooftop got a little bit of flooding. It made it awkward to walk around the back so I could turn off the gas.

This bridge had all the signs of the zodiac. I found Aries and took a pic. Go rams!

I think this is a drainage ditch in case there's a landslide from the mountain. Or whatever you call something like that.

The headpiece for the trail I followed. Why does the character's head on top look so familiar?

I stopped at a Buddhist temple on the way back and got a few neat pics of the inside. They always have the best artwork!

Another temple, but I don't know if it's Buddhist. This is also a view of its back. The front view was more impressive, but I couldn't find a path from where I was at to get around to look at it. :(