Monday, September 17, 2012

Typhoon Sanba

Yet another typhoon hit Korea today.  This makes... five?  I think?  since I've been here.  The first was Khanun, which was unimpressive, but there have been a couple now that have made Brighton and most schools in Korea cancel school for the day.  Last time that happened, when Typhoon Bolaven hit a couple of weeks ago, my school still had us go into work to "desk warm," even though there would be no classes that day.  I didn't mind so much cause I got a ton of stuff done without students there!  

Typhoons are classified differently than hurricanes are at home, so these that we've been experiencing have been about as strong as tropical storms, not quite as bad as Category 1 hurricanes would be.  We've had worse thunderstorms come through.  I've heard rumors that the typhoon gurus inflate the hype around typhoons so that their "projected number" of storms matches the number of typhoons that come through.  I don't know if there's any merit to that, but Typhoon Sanba just amounted to another rainy, windy day in Korea.  

Today's typhoon caused classes to be cancelled again and THIS time, foreign kinder teachers didn't have to go in at all!  Of course, I didn't get the text that our boss sent at 7:20 am letting us know, so I showed up to work.  And of course, today of all days, I was actually EARLY.  I'm pretty much never early.  I was proud of myself... and then my boss was like, "Zara, what are you doing here?  Didn't you get my text?"  Uh, no?  Dangit.  

I had also just given my apartment key to Jennifer, who was headed to the hospital for new x-rays of her broken finger, so she could hang out at my apartment after her appointment until I got off work... which meant I couldn't get back into my apartment now that I didn't have work.  Awesome.  Lucky for me, I've got a good friend/next-door-neighbor who let me chill at her apartment.  Thanks Marisa!  

Here's a few pics of the rain:





So after her appointment, I met Jennifer downtown for coffee, laughed at people walking by with their umbrellas all in a twist from the typhoon winds, proceeded to be laughed at when we became the people walking by with our umbrellas all in a twist from the typhoon winds, and then we made our way to Home Plus.  

Let me tell you, if you ever want to see that store EMPTY, go shopping during a typhoon.  There was NO ONE there!  It was AMAZING!  


They had new shopping carts, too, with CUP HOLDERS!  Cool, huh?


Ok, this is one of those things that cracks me up about shopping in Korea.  You get "service" with some purchases, aka free stuff, and it's usually just taped to the box.  Sometimes they'll add extra free stuff while you're looking at a box of cereal, so instead of getting two free sample-sized boxes with your purchase, you may get three just cause you looked interested in what the shop clerk was assigned to sell for the day.  It's pretty legit.  See above: Light Up cereal with THREE sample Light Up boxes taped on.  (Light Up is a competitor of Special K.)


Here's a box of cereal with a cereal bowl taped on.  You can get all sorts of cereal swag with your box.  I LOVE IT!


Our cart even had a calories-burned indicator and a distance meter!  I'm not exactly sure how to interpret the numbers, but it looks like we burned 19.5 calories while we walked around the store and either walked 434 meters or took 434 steps... but I could be very wrong.  Anyone else got a read on that?

Anyway, I highly recommend going to the store in the middle of the day during a typhoon.  You will have the most pleasant shopping experience of your life.

Later, on our way to meet Becky and Eleny for lunch, this sudden gust of wind killed Jennifer's brand-new umbrella.  It caught us completely off-guard!  We about died laughing, as you can see :)


Poor little umbrella.  Went and joined the umbrella cemetery.  RIP little cheap umbrella.  


We spent the afternoon watching Lord of the Rings, drinking red wine, and planning our trip to Japan at the end of the month.  It was a phenomenal typhoon day!  Thank God for a day off of work and a storm that wasn't very bad.

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