Awaiting Jangmi

According to the local Taiwanese, this is a weird typhoon season. We are awaiting our third typhoon in two weeks which will probably hit Taiwan at some point between Sunday night and Monday morning. Right now, Super Typhoon Jangmi is a category 4 (same scale as hurricanes), though it is expected to be a category 3 by the time it hits land.

Brittany and I spent our first typhoon visiting Brett, Mary and Paige in Yilan City (my old apartment), but we will be weathering this one in our apartment in Luodong. We just got back from stocking up on food (fruit, onion pancakes, stuff to make regular pancakes) and red wine. We're also readying our movie collections for the 'phoon, as there is really very little else you can do than hang out and watch movies.

While we didn't really experience the last typhoon with the exception of some rain, the eye of this one will be somewhere over the island and it seems to be heading north. Typhoon Sinlaku, our first, hovered over Yilan County for quite a while producing some very scary wind and rain. The whole building (we were on the 14th floor) was swaying and the windows shook pretty violently. Even though Sinlaku was only a category 1 typhoon, it caused a lot of damage to the area because it sat over us for so long without really moving. (To left: Courtyard of the Yilan apartments after Sinlaku.)

It will be interesting to see how Super Typhoon Jangmi affects the area, and while I hope that everyone is safe and no property is destroyed, I am also kind of excited for it to hit. We are anticipating a Typhoon day (no school) and looking forward to spending hours watching movies and hanging out. My apartment should be fine (only on the 7th floor) and while we have some large windows, the layout of our apartment gives us a little more protection in the interior of our apartment than Brett, Paige and Mary's did. Plus, there is nothing like typhoon food -- it is a certainly an enjoyable dining experience!