the offWhites

It snowed today. What’s up with that?

We woke up to a dry sky today, the sun struggling to (and briefly succeeding in) breaking through the cloudes.  Two days in a row, people, TWO DAYS IN A ROW.  Call the news stations, notify your neighbors - it’s a freakin’ miracle.

And, for a fun non-sequitor, I’d like to introduce a short series, folks. It’s called “Things I Can Do In The US That I Can’t Do In Taiwan” and I’ll post one thing a day.

Things I Can Do In The US That I Can’t Do In Taiwan:

1. Get a 32oz diet Coke, straight from the fountain, at almost any gas station.

While our friends and family at home are finishing up their power-free stints courtesy of one absolutely wicked ice storm,

we’re missing the winter weather, (well, I am,) because it’s between 60 and 80 F on any given day here. Granted, with 100% humidity virtually 100% of the time, anything below maybe 68-70 is a little cold, especially on a scooter. Still, most days it feels like a crisp mid-spring or early-fall day, which makes holiday spirit a bit difficult to muster at times.

So we’re manufacturing it! We made a tree on the wall entirely out of lights and tape, (pictured at the top in glorious low-res animated .gif!,) and though neither of us are fans of blinking Christmas lights, they’re stuck on blink because they don’t work without the blinker bulb at the end, and didn’t come with non-blinker replacements. No biggie, really, we’re just glad to be starting our decoration.

We’re having a party for Christmas, we’ve invited all(?) of our friends in Taiwan (unless we’ve missed anyone, in which case, if you read this and didn’t recieve an invitation, please feel free to drop in) and we’re going to eat cookies and stuffing and basically all of a Christmas dinner minus the main courses, because our oven is actually a toaster oven (no one bakes here) and it just isn’t quite big enough for a turkey. We’re planning to do a small gift exchange, and to watch lots of classic Christmas specials and movies, and to just enjoy each others’ company and be family to each other. We and most of our friends here have come to think of each other as surrogate family, especially those at Hess, because we just need it here. We have some friends who are quite well travelled and have spent holidays alone abroad before and not been at all bothered by it, and are just so bummed by the conditions at this school that they feel they really need it this year. That’s not happy, change of subject!

So we’re cleaning house/watching TV right now, off and on, and Lisbeth’s making some cookies, too. We’re pretty stoked to see everyone, and to have people to spend Christmas with. It’s always been one of my favorite times of year, partially for the complete and total unpredictability of it (my family has an unofficial tradition of celebrating Christmas differently every year) and partially because it’s just great to see people you love.

Merry Christmas to all of you at home, all of our family and friends. We’ll miss you all this holiday, and we hope we can see every one of you in the months following our return home, or in the month during which we visit home, if we decide to stay here more than one year, which quite frankly is still undecided for us at this point. Despite some negative experiences we’ve already whined and moaned about here, and quite a few more we haven’t discussed here, we’re really enjoying this country, and (probably shouldn’t post this next statement where my employers might see it) though there is absolutely zero chance at this point, particularly after an event this past week that I won’t get into at the moment, that anything on Earth could persuade us to sign on for a second year with Hess, if we can find employment at some other place next year, there is every possibility we’ll stay here a while longer.

Sorry there was so much un-Christmas-y stuff in there, but there are a few days left until Christmas. I promise I’ll post at least one all-cheer-no-gripe post before it passes.

PS: The photo set of the ice storm was shot and posted by Jon Brisbin. He’s a great guy I know from writing (and a few other English related) classes at Pitt State. I don’t know if I’ve linked him before on here, but I think I should go ahead and name-drop him now while he still knows me, because I’m about as sure as I can be that within the foreseeable future you’ll be able to purchase novels with his name on the cover. Pop on over to his blog, he’s full of interesting thoughts, and had some great stuff about the recent ice storm, elements that photos and even television news coverage (I got to see NBC’s coverage because I discovered this week they’re video podcasting the Nightly News now) can’t express. And when you see this, Jon, you’ll be glad to know that though Lisbeth and I have considered ourselves to be an OS-agnostic household, we recently picked up a MacBook, and we’re total converts now. We have Windows, Linux, and OSX in the house, and now anything other than OSX borders on infuriating an awful lot of the time. Never would have guessed I’d be as thoroughly sold as I am as quickly as I was.

So, I understand that it’s freezing cold and miserable back home right now. In my hometown, “a major ice storm that had been forecast and feared for the past few days appeared about to come true.” Oh, the foreboding! Worse, though, is this news:

At Kansas City International Airport, most incoming flights scheduled after 8 p.m. Monday were canceled, as were a few dozen departures.

Oh no! Kansas City International, sleepiest international airport ever, shut down? I guess it still sucks if you’re trying to fly in or out, though.

In light of such cold and suffering, I thought you might like to see a few of my pictures from today:

Ivan, going to town on the monkey bars.

Ivan and Lola, looking down from the lofty heights of the rope bridge that doesn’t even clear my shoulders.

Minnie, sporting uncharicteristic braided pigtails.

Thomas. He looks so serious, but I think it’s really just squintiness from the bright, warm, sun.

Possibly more than any other kid in the class, Peggy loves to have her picture taken. She’s got the same reaction to the camera that cats in comic strip (Garfield, Get Fuzzy) have to the sound for a can opener - somehow, she knows there’s a camera out and comes running, no matter what she was doing before.

Lola, Ivan, and Finian on the alligator teeter-totter. If you only ever saw these pictures, you might even think this is something that happens more than once every 3 or 4 weeks!

Elin with a rare smile. I think it’s my favorite picture from today? She doesn’t usually like to have her picture taken, but today, while she was playing, she didn’t seem to mind to much.

Oh, and one last thing - another video from yesterday. This one was shot during the afternoon, when official learning time is over and kids are playing while they wait to go home. There are kids from all three classes in the room, but the featured players are all mine.

(Mom, take the time to watch - there’s a minor tribute around the 50-second mark!)

The great tv catch-up has begun.  I watched both Project Runway episodes last night (holy burrito, that Elise is clearly made to play the reality-tv weirdo) (she does do nice work, though, notwithstanding the spewing tumor that erupted from the back of Challenge 1’s dress), and tonight I’ve watched an episode of Men in Trees, two episodes of Private Practice, one episode of Grey’s Anatomy, and I’m about to watch another.  This is a trend that will probably continue for the immediately foreseeable future.

So, have I mentioned that it rains here?  That it rains here a lot? I’m really getting tired of it.  So, so, so very tired of it.  All the freaking time, it’s raining.  Sometimes it’s a drizzle, sometimes a standard shower, others it’s a genuine downpour. But I’m tired of it all. As soon as I find the person responsible for it, they are so fired.

This morning, we scootered into work with the sun shining, and the temperatures gloriously mild. This afternoon, we rode home in full rain gear, the water rushing down, angry and cold as it hit our skin like little balls of barely ineffectual teeth. Tonight, we’ll sleep beneath a down duvet, a space heater aimed at my feet.

It’s starting to feel like fall.  Ever since last week’s typhoon, the weather has been (relatively) cool, and the sun hasn’t come out at all.  I don’t know what the actual temperature is, but it feels like in the evening it’s dropping below 80F, and combined with the constant state of overcast, I can almost convince myself that fall here feels like fall at home.  I’m really looking forward to winter, though.  I don’t think the trees will change color, but the air already has an almost crisp quality to it, despite being still warm, and that has left me hopeful that winter here will *actually* feel like fall at home.

/fingers crossed

Soon we’ll have internet access in our apartment and be able to post on a more regular basis. We’re really wishing we’d already had it, because it would have made this past Saturday much less boring. Because seriously, if you can believe it, typhoons are just damned boring. You buy some extra food, you sleep in, then you sit around the house all day. You can’t leave, because you’d be blown out to sea, even if you live 20 miles from the coast. Two or three times an hour we’d hear a noise that is remarkably similar to the one that would, in Kansas, have meant we’d waited too long to go to the basement. But here, if you go to the basement, you might drown. So you stay up on the eighth floor and deal with the wind. Eventually you decide you just can’t take it anymore, your legs are about to atrophy and you need a Coke, and doggoneit you’re going to the convenience store. You don’t make it 30 yards from the front door of the building, but as soon as there seems to be a lull in the storm, you try again.

So I did. I tried again, I made it to Family Mart, and we relished Coke Zero (because the only shop within typhoon time walking distance doesn’t carry Coke Light, which is what Diet Coke is called here) and Doritos and some other stuff I can’t quite remember. In retrospect, beer might have helped the time to pass more quickly, but that might have incited plans like trying to walk to a store that did have Coke Light, and it turns out the lull really was just that. Five minutes after I got home, the wind picked back up to full force, and I would not for anything have been out in it.

Damage was minimal though. The storm was bigger than the island, but thankfully only one person died, and four of the five people who were injured were blown off of their motorcycles while attempting to ride through it. The fifth was hit by falling rocks, while walking, during a typhoon, through a posted falling rock zone. Kind of feels like being at home, except only five people got hurt by doing stupid stuff, rather than numbers that could be the populations of small towns.

Strange fact: I’m only nervous about tornadoes when it’s dark outside. I’m convinced for some reason that if I can see a tornado coming, there’s no problem. Immaterial since no twister touched down this evening, at least none of which I’m aware.

I say yay though, because I was too busy last night to finish reading The Man Who Folded Himself, and tonight it seemed like the best use of my time on the floor of the shower. The ending, if you already know it, is as anticlimactic as the second viewing of Fight Club, but on the whole it was a great experience. Not as moving as my periodic re-reading of The Bridge to Terabithia, but since that was the book that introduced me as a child to reading for meaning rather than simply entertainment, I doubt anything else ever will be.

If it’s processed and ready to check out when I go in tomorrow, I’m planning next to read Brasyl, otherwise I’ll probably check out again Love is a Mix Tape, a book that fell victim at the beginning of spring to my inability to limit myself to a quantity of books I can actually read. Or maybe Cryptonomicon. Trying to choose just one book is difficult, but I have to choose before I leave work tomorrow, since I’m imposing a strict one-book-at-a-time policy on myself until we leave. There’s not much time left, I don’t want to leave a bunch of titles sitting around unread.

Right now, there are two towels laid down on the floor of our shower, and Seth and I are both sitting here in said shower. We’ve both got our laptops, and we’re listening to some really obnoxious radio. It seems a little ridiculous, but then, that’s what you do when there are tornado warnings and sirens going off and you have no basement.

I’m not too worried yet. It’s tornado season in Kansas, and I’ve lived here all my life. Now, if it starts to sound like we’re inthe path of an oncoming train, Seth has informed me I’ll crouch as flat in the shower as I can, and he’ll cover me. When he told me this, I told him that was silly, since I at least have hair to protect my head. He insisted though, although he did agree to at least grab a towel and put it over his head. Cause, you know, he’s bald and all.

You know, seeking shelter during tornados is never as much fun as it really ought to be. When I was in second grade, there was a really big tornado that hit Topeka (well, I thought it was really big. A fairly thorough google search indicates it wasn’t big enough to merit any lasting coverage that made it online, unlike, say, the really big one that hit Topeka in 1966) during the school day. We all sat out in the hall for what seemed like for-ever, but was probably only a couple of hours. My teacher read to us most of the time, but the only problem was that most of the kids in my class were on on one side of the door, and a few of us were on the the other. Yeah. We couldn’t really hear the latest in the story of the Boxcar kids.

Then, when I was an RA in college, there was a pretty significant tornado that came through SE Kansas. Pittsburg wasn’t really affected, but tons of towns all around were. Well, I was an RA in the basement, so everyone and their sister were down in my hall. I had the tv in my room tuned to the weather channel and turned up as far as it would go so everyone could hear. It was clear, though, from watching the radar, that we were never really in any danger, so I sat in my room (ooo - big windows!) and worked on the sock I was knitting at the time.

Well. Now it’s 11:00, and the tornado warning has expired. There’s still a tornado watch on until 4:00am, but I think we can probably leave the relative safety of the shower and move to our bed. I sort of want to make a dirty joke here about moving to our bed, but my mom reads this, and that would just make me uncomfortable. So, just forget I said anything, okay? Thanks. It can be our little secret.