Yesterday we went out in the morning to get a few things done. First stop was the bike shop where, for US$10 they replaced the back brakes on both of our tires while we waited. We thought about getting some grocery shopping done but decided first to check out a new restaurant for lunch called Salad Maniac. We biked between a few raindrops but no big deal and stopped smoothly at the shop, seeing as we had lovely new brakes on our bikes. The salad was fabulous.

By then the sky had darkened quite a bit so we headed home. Again, there were a few drops as we pulled into the parking garage but by the time we got upstairs to the apartment the skies had opened wide. When it rains here it can be really impressive. I've been in thundershowers in Connecticut where it rains buckets. The difference here is how long those buckets can be sustained. We were back home around noon and it poured the rest of the day.

We went out in the afternoon to walk around the park just to get out of the apartment. We ran into a couple of our colleagues who were also feeling the cabin fever but we were about the only people out. By evening the streets were mobbed. We met a friend for dinner at the mall and the place was crazy busy. What do you do on a rainy Saturday evening? You go to the mall, of course. The Kaohsiung Arena is next door to this mall and it had some kind of event going on. From the signs outside my best guess is that it was about Kawasaki scooters or possibly hiring English tutors for your kids. It was hard to tell.

There are plenty of rain coats for people on their scooters but for walking around it's all about umbrellas. At the mall entrance there was a woman handing out narrow plastic bags to slip your umbrella into while you walked around the mall. Out on the streets virtually every shop has an umbrella stand next to the door. Some people carry around these clever plastic telescoping umbrella covers that keep the wet umbrellas from dripping all over the floor.

Come October we will begin to forget about all this rain. Until then I plan to keep complaining.

Here's what the rain looks liked outside my classroom yesterday (and every other day when it's been raining hard).

The rain this month has been relentless. Okay, maybe not the whole month, but pretty darn close. No wonder it's called the the rainy season. They're trying to finish the temporary playground space and they need two days in a row with no (or minimal) rain and that hasn't happened since the typhoon hit, nearly three weeks ago.

The rain doesn't seem to slow down the building construction much, however. Yesterday there was a really impressive thunder storm that rolled through and there were men out there playing with, oh sorry, working with the crane and digging big holes. Eventually the guy driving the crane came out of his cozy little driving compartment to stare at the sky but the lightning was still flashing all over the place. Crazy.

Here's a shot of the construction site, although it's not as impressive in a photo as it in real life.

Those are dark clouds in the background, by the way, not blue sky.

The kids were joking that there wasn't any reason to be building a swimming pool when there were already pool-size puddles out there. If the rain keeps up I imagine native fish will spontaneously populate the pools and we can start a fishing club.

I should have tried taking a video of the rain coming down as we left school yesterday. There's a lot of roof area that drains down onto the wooden-floored courtyard outside the classrooms. The waterfall action was pretty impressive. We should have just admitted defeat and taken a taxi to yoga but we really wanted our bikes to be home at the end of the day (I'll explain why in a second) so we waited until it was only pouring instead of a deluge. Of course we were instantly soaked and it was clear we were not going to yoga in clothes that wet. So we just biked home instead.

It was cold (cold! In Taiwan I was actually cold!) and the rain stung when it picked up again, which, of course, it did. Because this is the rainy season, after all. At one point we were waiting for the light to change (was it my imagination or did we get stopped by every red light on the way home?) and two minivans attempted to occupy the same space at the same time in the middle of the intersection. Fortunately they were both traveling at about two miles per hour so there was no damage but it did require both the drivers to get out into the rain so they could stare at each other's bumper. If they'd paid half that much attention when they were driving they wouldn't have run into each other.

Back to the bikes getting back home. Today is Open House at school which makes for a very long day. Clearly we need to head to the Wakey afterwards for drinks and dinner which means taking a taxi home instead of biking, which means we wanted the bikes home at the end of yesterday so we wouldn't have to get them home at the end of today if we'd left them at school because of the rain. Do you follow?

Unique flavors of Taiwan?

I bought Listerine mouthwash yesterday that's green tea flavored.

The new frappuccino flavor for the season at Starbucks is purple sweet potato. Yum.

Our visit to the dentist yesterday was one of the more "western" experiences we've had here in Taiwan. The waiting room was like any you'd find in the US, which surprised me. We'd heard plenty of people talk about doctors' offices where the patients are treated in the same room as the people that are waiting their turn. Truth in advertising, right? You get to see what you're about to get. Even at my visits with the doctor at the hospital last spring the person next in line waited in the examining room.

The waiting room at our dentist, of course, only had (outdated?) Chinese magazines to read or the Chinese all-news station on the TV to watch, and there was a bit of waiting. Lee and I had back-to-back half-hour appointments but there's just one dentist and he does all the work himself - no dental hygienist doing the cleaning. When was the last time you had a dentist clean your teach? Dr. Juang, or Jason, as he asked us to call him, grew up in Seattle so his English was impeccable and he was the gentlest dentist I've ever had. He was very good at explaining what he saw with my teeth and what he recommended I have done and why, which includes removing two of my wisdom teeth.

Lee is skeptical about having dental work done here (well, anywhere, actually. He has a love-hate relationship with dentists that doesn't include the love part) but I've known for a long time those teeth needed to go and I really liked Jason. The first tooth will come out next week and the second one I'll wait on for awhile. It's a lot more complicated so I'm waiting to see how the first goes before I decide about the second. I'll keep you all asprised.

So turns out karaoke is a lot of fun. Nothing untoward happened, just a bunch of women drinking gin and tonics, beer and cider, eating fried chicken and singing loudly and badly. The KTV was just what you'd want for a private party. The place is just a bunch of rooms with really good sound proofing. Our room was lined with couches and tables with a small stage at one end and a huge tv screen. We'd brought food and the staff provided the plates and glasses and delivered beer, ice and tea throughout the evening.

I wonder if they regularly stop by all the rooms just to keep an eye on things. You don't hear much about illegal activities at the KTV's - there's virtually no drug activity in Taiwan so that takes out a whole swath of potential bad things happening - but I imagine you'd like to see it stay that way if you're a business owner. The Taiwanese women at the party said they all went to KTV's in high school and college to hang out with friends and there was never any sense of it being unsafe or seedy. Not unlike your local neighborhood bar without the pool table and every group of friends gets their own room.

On a completely different note, we had a nice ride up and over Monkey Mountain on Saturday morning. Since we were out so early the traffic was light so we explored the streets along the harbor before heading home. Here's the view back towards the "mountain."

It doesn't look so impressive when you're not actually biking up it.

Some of the statues at the art park seem to have gotten a new coat of paint.

We also saw this pair in an area known as the Banana Pier.

 There were a pair of dogs waiting patiently outside the door of the not-yet-open restaurant hoping for a handout, presumably.

In the afternoon I felt like a little baking and pulled out this little treasure I'd found at the grocery store: cookie mix straight from the USA.

I like that they just slapped a sticker with the Chinese directions over the already printed English directions. The laundry porch smelled delicious while the cookies baked. That's where the oven is, which is nice because it doesn't heat up the apartment while you're baking. The cookies were a big hit among the people I shared them with. I'm hoping to find more treasures like this the next time I shop.

We thought the twin typhoons might hit us this weekend but they've both turned abruptly north and we'll only feel the far edge of Goni later today before it slams into Japan. My plans to bake peanut butter cookies and sit around the apartment all day have changed to going for a long bike ride. I guess that's a good thing.

And this evening's plans haven't been washed out, which is a very good thing. There are a dozen or so women from school meeting at the local KTV to celebrate a birthday. KTVs are karaoke bars where you can rent a room for your group and have your own little (or big) party. Some of these places are really sleazy but there are others that are more upscale, I guess you could say. I've never been inside one, nor do I know anyone who has. It should be pretty interesting. It may be that what happens in a KTV stays in a KTV, but I'll do my best to tell you about it tomorrow.

Yesterday was dumpling Friday and on our way to the dumpling cart I got a hankering for a cup of good coffee. Not the questionable sludge from the faculty room, but a nice foamy latte laden with sugar. Fortunately, we pass three or four 7-11's on our less than two mile commute so I made Lee sit through another cycle of the red light while I popped into the first corner store so I could indulge my craving. It was even served in an appropriately labeled cup for a Friday morning.

I could watch the construction workers getting their day started as I sipped my lovely brew. This is the view from around the corner of my classroom.

The old school was just beyond where those big orange drums are. The blue crane reaches about five stories up and all the workers seem to enjoy standing around under it while it moves big pieces of equipment around. Although I don't, I could easily spend an entire free period watching them out there.

This afternoon's shopping trip to the market included, from left to right: vegetable dumplings, cookies, apples, edamame, guava, mangoes, bananas, and roasted chicken leg. Dinner tonight was quite yummy.

One indication that we are not newbies is that I can guess what one of the notices in the elevator in our apartment building says.

This is Ghost Festival month and the residents of the apartment building are being offered the opportunity to participate in the festivities at the building. They can purchase bricks of paper money to be burned in the braziers on the sidewalk out front and they can set up tables in front of the lobby to display their offerings of food to the spirits. As you can see from the notice, there will be an event on August 22nd from 1:00 to 2:30 in the afternoon. The date is listed as 104-8-22 because the Taiwanese start their calendar from their independence day which was 104 years ago. I have no idea what the event is that day but I'll be sure to check it out and let you know.

This morning we went with a friend on a hike up Monkey Mountain for the first time since returning to Taiwan. I was worried that the typhoon would have left the paths littered with fallen trees. But as it turned out you could hardly tell there'd been a storm given how little damage we saw.

The mountain was quite busy with lots of small crowds at the tables and pavilions scattered around in the woods. There are people who carry up the mountain gallons of water, propane tanks and all the paraphernalia to supply dozens of people with hot tea. At one such spot a woman reached into her backpack to take out a bag of snacks and a monkey came swooping in to grab it away before she could even react. When she decided to rummage around for the second bag we decided to leave so as not to get caught between any monkeys and her food.

At another lookout area a man had carried up his guitar and was playing to an appreciative audience, both people and monkeys.

The views from the back side of the mountain were nice despite the occasional rain. There were plenty of monkeys to admire, although I didn't take many photos of them. I still enjoy seeing them very much but I don't feel the need to photograph all of them. I did take a few shots just to document that they were there.

That's the ocean off in the distance.

We had a great ride to the end of Cijin Island and back this morning. The heat index was approaching 100 degrees but we still had a great time. The key on a bike is to keep moving. At least then you have a breeze.

We were surprised to find sand castles on the beach when we first got to the island. Someone was quite busy in the last week, building them after typhoon Soudelor. They may not last long, as there are two more typhoons building to the east of us right now.

The surf was higher than we've seen before. I could've stayed and watched the waves crashing on the sea wall all morning but it was too hot to stand still for long.

On the way back home we took on one particular road where we could see from one end to the other and there was one traffic light after another. It reminded me of a scene in Star Wars where Liam Neeson's character is fighting the Sith guy with the cool black and red face. They fight and then the doors close and they have to wait until the doors open before they attack again. That's how we were with the traffic lights. We'd fight our way through the traffic for a couple of blocks and then get stuck at a light for awhile. Then when the light turned green we'd go barreling back into the traffic for another few lights before we were stopped once again. In the end no one died, which is, of course, a good thing. Liam Neeson's character wasn't so lucky, although Mr. Neeson probably considered himself lucky since it saved him from having to come back and participate in the next two films. But I digress...

After our ride we met up with some friends for lunch at a Thai restaurant. It was fabulous and may become our go-to activity on Saturdays. By the time we got home we'd been gone for about six hours. The rest of the day I spent warping my loom, which is a great way to recover from a such a busy morning.

Here's what my Friday looked like:

I started out the day with a beautiful sunrise with my morning coffee.

Since it's Friday we bought dumplings at our favorite cart on our bike ride to school. This is the first time we've stopped at the cart since we've been back, although we say good morning every day on our way by. I managed a short conversation with the head dumpling maker (the wife of the pair that man the cart). I figured out she was asking if we'd been to the U.S. for the summer and I said yes. It was a very short conversation. Clearly I need to get back to Chinese lessons.

The school day bubbled along nicely. I got my E block class to laugh, even with the principal in the room making them nervous. (She had stopped by to see how things are going in the ELL department.) As far as I know I did not make anyone cry today. I did graduate two students out of the program, which made them very happy, although they claim they'll miss me.

I spent a few minutes of my day looking out my window and watching the construction site. They are working on phase two of the new campus, which includes a new cafeteria, swimming pool, gym and playing fields. As far as I can tell they spent the day digging a large hole, filling more than a dozen very large trucks with fill that got carted away, and then apparently filling in the hole back in again.

The bike ride home went smoothly. They've almost finished clearing the fallen trees on the little section of bike path we like to use next to the train tracks. Just about all of the damage from the typhoon has been cleared up. It's been pretty amazing to see how quickly the work has gone.

When we got home I went for a swim at the pool at our apartment. It's an outside pool but it's mostly covered by the outside edge of the building so it doesn't get much direct sun which keeps it a little cooler than it might if it were more exposed. This evening it didn't get any sun, but it got rain instead. It turns out it's pretty cool to go swimming in the rain.

This evening has been spent watching the Patriots play a preseason game against Green Bay. We'd stopped at the 7-11 for a mostly western collection of snacks for football watching:

It's been a very nice Friday and now we get the weekend. I hope you all have had a nice Friday too.

Everyone had said, wait til next year, it'll be so much easier your second year. How true! This time last year I was so overwhelmed by what I had to do at school. Getting used to living in Taiwan was secondary to getting used to teaching as KAS but I was still often blown away by the newness of it all. Now it's comfortable, even when it's complicated. Lee and I have dentist appointments in a couple of weeks and it was complicated to set them up because I don't know any dentists nor do I speak their language, but on the other hand, of course we have dentist appointments. Everyone goes to see the dentist. Last August I might have burst into tears if someone told me I had to set up a dentist appointment.

On the flip side, you may be asking, isn't it getting less interesting to live here, not as thrilling now that it's not so new? I feel like I'm getting the best of both sides right now. I've got the comfort of the routine with the still-novel-to-me city living in a foreign country. It may be our second year but it's still different than the previous 50 or so years of my life.

The best time for me to see the stars is early in the morning. It gets dark here much earlier in August than it does back in Connecticut - the sun is setting around 6:30 and there's hardly any dusk - so the stars could be out long before I go to bed. Okay, not too long before I go to bed since I'm struggling to keep my eyes open much past 8:30. But even so, I think there are more lights on or maybe there's more lingering scooter exhaust in the air, so it's just hard to make out more than a few stars in the evening.

This morning, though, when I stood out on my balcony just after I woke up there was a lovely crescent moon hanging over the eastern horizon and the constellation Orion was there as well. There weren't a ton of stars but enough that I could see Orion, and he's my favorite constellation (how nerdy is it to have a favorite constellation?). The sun rose shortly after that, which was also quite lovely, and now the day has started. We've managed to have two good days of teaching, only about 178 more to go!

We made it through the first day of school. It is so much easier not being new but still exhausting. This year I'm teaching four middle school classes and one small group of third and fourth graders. The middle school classes are mixed grades, sixth through eighth. If you'd asked me two years ago what age level I'd be teaching I am pretty sure I would not have imagined it would be this age. I do like it, though. It turns out fourteen year olds are not so different than four year olds.

After school we treated ourselves to an early exit from school and a bike ride to the harbor. Many sections of the bike path are still impassable for all the trees that are down. There are crews cleaning up all over the place and all the roads I've seen have been cleared but it'll take awhile to do the paths. Picking our way through the branches reminded me of the big Halloween storm we got a few years ago in New England. After that storm Lee and I walked up the bike path in Simsbury and had to wrestling our way through tree branches and snow to get through the fallen trees. It was like that here except it's about 50 degrees warmer and many of the branches are from palm trees instead of evergreens.

This morning we decided it was time to venture out and get our week's shopping started. Our plan was to head to the morning produce market (aka "the big melon market") but as we exited the parking garage ramp the skies opened up and sent us back inside. The next attempt was an hour or two later when the showers had stopped, at least for awhile. It was too late for the market and too early for the grocery store so we walked to the 24 hour store (aka "the plastic store," aka "the mini walmart").

It became quite clear the destruction the typhoon left in its wake. We didn't see any buildings with damage but the broken and uprooted trees were overwhelming. Later when we biked over to the grocery store the bike path was nearly impassable in places from all the limbs down. It was heart breaking to walk through our neighborhood park, Aohzidi, and see the devastation of the trees.

Here are a few pix of what we saw.

Scooter dominoes

Most of the palm trees were unscathed but not these particular ones.

Look for the man (without a helmet, btw) cutting away the tree limbs while sitting in the tree.

In this picture you can see the path disappear into the trees. Before the storm that path went all the way through the park unimpeded. Now the whole park is full of downed trees and tree limbs. I imagine there will be armies of people out over the next few weeks clearing away the debris but it'll take years for the trees to recover.

Video from my phone really doesn't do a typhoon justice but I tried. Typhoon Soudelor made landfall this morning. It hadn't started raining at 5:00 this morning but the wind was starting to howl. By 6:00 the rain started pouring down and the wind started to pick up. It's noon now and both the sustained wind and the wind gusts have really intensified. I watched the top of a tree across the street get torn off and the fencing around the lot outside our balcony has been getting pulled apart piece by piece and sent flying.

Our apartment faces east and the winds are generally from the northwest so we've had some of the windows open so we can listen to the storm. Surprisingly very little rain has blown into the apartment. Apparently we've gotten nearly 10 inches of rain so far (although I don't know how you can measure rainfall when the wind blows it around like this) and sustained winds of over 50 mph. I didn't really know what that meant before today. When a really strong gust of wind comes by we can feel it in our ears just before we can hear it outside. The change in pressure explains why my still-healing broken arm has been aching so much today.

I just watched a couple of people walk down the street. I guess the fact that they were wearing motorcycle helmets while they went for a walk during a hurricane makes them slightly smarter than the average idiot? I'm really interested in seeing the damage first-hand but I can wait until the storm passes. That should be late this afternoon or evening.

Here's what I've discovered as I wait for typhoon Soudelor:

The air gets really, really humid. And hot too, but it's the humidity that's stifling.

Taiwan seems quite small when you look at satellite images of the typhoon. Once the storm makes landfall it will cover the entire island.

In Kaohsiung, most people seem unconcerned that a typhoon is about to slam into the island. Maybe they've already stocked up on noodles and toilet paper but everyone seems to be carrying on like the weather is no big deal. We'll find out tomorrow how big of a deal this storm is.

We have a big storm heading our way, typhoon Soudelor. It's said to be the biggest typhoon or hurricane so far this year. It swamped some tiny little islands but hasn't hit land of any significant size yet. Does that make it like a tree that falls in the woods? If there's no one around to feel the impact does it not make the news?

It's making the news here because Taiwan is directly in it's path. The weather forecast calls for winds on Saturday to be 60 to 80 mph. I think we'll pick up some fruit this afternoon to last us through the weekend, although typhoon prices are already in effect - the cost of produce jumps up about 50% when there's a typhoon on the way. There will be no bike riding this weekend. I guess we'll have to get a nice ride in today or tomorrow.

We survived faculty meetings, day one. Our body clocks are both off so we were awake from about three this morning but we did okay. There are plenty of other teachers in the same boat so everyone is pretty sympathetic. The most noteworthy part of the day was seeing the physical changes on campus. The day after summer vacation began the construction company tore down the old building to make way for phase 2, the new athletic fields and gym.

I took pictures of the view from my balcony at the beginning of summer and again today. Pretty impressive change.

June:

August:

There's nothing like a good night's sleep to make the world look so much better. I was up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night but that's not so bad and it gave me a chance to work on Sunday's NYTimes crossword puzzle. This morning wasn't quite so hot as the day before so we got out early on the bikes and rode down to the harbor. We arrived just in time to watch a cruise ship make its way through the very narrow mouth of the harbor.

We wondered if maybe the ship had gotten lost. It's hard to imagine how Kaohsiung got on a cruise itinerary. I love this city but it's not exactly a tourist destination. Apparently this ship sails out of Singapore and visits all the hot spots in this corner of the globe. Who knew?

On the way back from our bike ride we stopped at the Carrefour to do some shopping. It's not where we did the bulk of our shopping last year but we thought we'd try something new. I got a kick out of the aisle signs.

Salty Canned Food & Sweet Canned Food

Carbonated Drink & Functional Drink

Now that the kitchen is restocked we're ready for work to get started. Tomorrow is the first of four days of meetings. There's a typhoon heading this way so maybe we'll only have three days of meetings. One can always hope.

We've been back in Kaohsiung for less than 12 hours and it's been both great and culture shock. The heat and humidity are just like I expected except that I'm not ready for it. Our body clocks are naturally way off so the timing for eating and sleeping are a bit of a bother. The kitchen was completely devoid of anything to eat except for some granola bars and the fruit our cleaning lady, Elyzia, left for us.

Elyzia is one of the high points of our return. The apartment was sparkling clean, the bills were paid and there were mangoes on the kitchen table. She iron, folded and organized all our clothes too. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I hadn't figured out where I was going to put all my things before we left for the summer and now I'm having to find things like my t-shirts based on Elyzia's organizational style. It's a bit odd having ironed t-shirts too. She organized the tupperware too, but that always needs organizing.

Back to the culture shock. We went out for lunch at a western-style brunch-all-day place. We wanted to eat someplace that was familiar and where we didn't have to decipher the menu. After all, by then we'd been travelling for over 24 hours and our brains were fried. That was fine. Then we went to the 24-hour fruit stand that we pass on our way to work and that was better than fine.

Mangoes, pineapple, bananas, Asian pear and passion fruit. The watermelon looked really good but we had more shopping to do so we needed to save some space on the bikes.

The next stop was more of the culture shock part of the day. We wanted to go simple for dinner and have rice and beans but we couldn't find any cans of beans. There were plenty of cans of things but who knows what's inside when you can't read the labels. Plan B was to have tofu with the rice so off to the refrigerator section I went. Again, all those packages with Chinese labels. There are about a dozen choices of tofu and no way to tell how they're different from one another. No problem, we'll just buy a couple different kinds and besides, I found a package of cooked beans sitting next to the tofu section.

Come dinner time, I open the package and discover that these are loaded with sugar. I imagine someone might serve them on top of shaved ice or use them as a filling for a cake (the Taiwanese love their sweet red beans). So back to Plan B, the tofu, except that the package I open is silky tofu and not really suitable for the stir fry I had planned. By then I'm too weary to care so we had not-quite-cooked-enough rice with a slurry of peanut, soy sauce and tofu. Oh, and I cut up one of the mangoes that Elyzia left for us except that it turned out to be a papaya instead and Lee doesn't like papaya.

Tomorrow we'll do a real shopping trip and stock the larder, we'll have had a night's sleep in our very own bed, and everything will be a little easier. Except that it will still be very hot and humid. Welcome home.

We have arrived back in Asia. Hong Kong airport at the moment, but we'll be boarding a plane for Kaohsiung in an hour or so. We've been to this airport a number of times, but never been to Hong Kong itself, although I was there for about 24 hours back in 2001. Anyway, the airport is beautiful. Out one side of the terminal are mountains and out the other is the ocean. There's a gondola going up one of the ridges that I'd like to visit some day. It's such a short trip to here from Kaohsiung - less than an hour and a half plane ride - that it's really quite easy to do for a quick weekend out of Taiwan. We've got ten months of weekends to plan.

I'm really excited to be back on this side of the globe. First, there's the excellent free wifi so I can be sitting in the airport terminal typing this. But mostly I'm excited to be heading home - to my own bed, my own stuff, even my job. I've had a really wonderful time spending seven weeks travelling around New England to visit friends and family. We probably saw more people than we ever would have in a normal summer. But it's also hard to be untethered for so long. We had more offers than we could ever use to stay with people (thank you all!) but it's a long time to be away from your own space.

But now we'll be getting back to that space. I wonder what our apartment will look like, smell like, feel like after being unlived in for two months. It's such a different feeling than twelve months ago when we were arriving for the first time. I like this feeling much better than last year's. I have the excitement without quite so much uncertainty. That's a good feeling.