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.