Weathering the Typhoon, Part I.

For the past two days we've been living under the constant blanket of a typhoon warning. The whole stay in and away from windows spiel. Typhoons, in case you are wondering, are wetter, slightly less windy hurricanes. Anyway, on Friday the news said a nice, fat typhoon was headed our direction over the weekend. Our student volunteer, Kelly, said in the past that typhoons tend to make store signs fall; make trees break; and make bikes and, sometimes, cars fly. She said that this typhoon would be a category 17/20 typhoon, which is I guess one of the most powerful typhoons they've had in a while. But, so far, so good. The typhoon has been a slow-moving one, so while it was supposed to hit Friday night, it's now scheduled for Sunday.

Friday was the NTU club fair. Seriously, I've never seen so many people packed into one place at the same time before. It felt like a night market except instead of food booths surrounding you everywhere, it's club booths. I signed up for taekwondo (at Cris' prodding) and the Chinese instrument club (dad, I'm going to learn the er hu and make you proud!) I also signed up for NTU's orchestra but given I don't have my cello with me, that could be problematic.

Me and Atsushi in his club's clothes. This guy is seriously awesome. Also I realize there's not that many people in the picture; this is the outside row of the club fair.

Friday was also Brian Tsay's 21st birthday, which is just not a very big deal to any of the Taiwanese here, nor any of the Japanese or European international students that share the floor with us. We were going to go clubbing but given the typhoon's presence, we stayed in the confines of Guo Qing dorm. We partied for Brian anyway and got him suitably wasted; we also unintentionally got our other friend Cris wasted, but it's not our fault he gets plastered after two shots. I mean, come on, Cris.

That's our RA, Emma, joining in on the fun and making her mark on a wasted Cris. Given her limited English, she still knew how to write "Cocksucker" and "Teabag."

We decided what was supposed to be "one of the strongest typhoons in history" was merely just a "bitch rain," so today (Saturday) we decided to go out on the field and play some Red Rover and some soccer.

Thanks to my good friend Wendy Eav for weathering the typhoon and taking this pic!

The rain ended up getting pretty damn hectic for about 5 minutes during our hour or so out there. Typhoon rain is pretty painful when it arrives; it means a lot of really, really fast rain coming at you like a sucker punch from the side. For the most part though, the rain was definitely in the "bitch rain" category, which is to say, it definitely wasn't as powerful as I expected from a typhoon. That said, it was still a hell of a lot stronger than anything I've seen in California.

Red Rover was a bust; the rain was making everyone's hands far too slippery to keep anyone from breaking through the chains. So we played soccer instead on the field with 3 inches of water over it. We were playing against some good-as-pro Europeans, and it was pretty damn awesome. We were all disappointed in the "bitch rain" and challenge the typhoon to another outing tomorrow, when it finally shows up.

Apparently, Taiwanese people watch movies during typhoons, so it's time for me to follow suit. I'll update you guys about the typhoon soon, after it levels up from noob status.

-Justin