Tropical Storm Kompasu

When we lived in Taiwan there was always talk of typhoons. Typhoons would explain all weather systems. "It's raining because there's a typhoon in the sea" "It's sunny because a typhoon is coming" were typical Taiwanese explanations. We started getting into the habit of tracking the typhoons on the Wunderground website, but our tracking always ended in disappointment. During our 6 months in Taiwan, not a single typhoon hit the mainland. They always floated over to China, Japan or off into the sea.

Now, here we are in Korea, a country that isn't the least bit tropical but has certainly felt that way this summer, tracking a typhoon. It's due to hit tomorrow, but due to my previous experiences I'm still skeptical that it will amount to anything.

I asked a Korean friend about the typhoon today. "We (Koreans) don't care about that," she said. "Seoul is safe. No trees."

You don't CARE that a typhoon is going to be dumped on our asses tomorrow morning? At home, on the east coast of Canada a hurricane is currently expected to hit land this weekend and the news stations have been reporting it for days now. I know we live in a concrete jungle here in Seoul, and call me a typical Canadian, but we bought extra water and dug out the candles after Korean class this evening.

I hope it hits. I've been waiting a year now to experience a typhoon. I've got my supplies. I'm ready. Cancel school. Bring it on.

UPDATE: The Typhoon actually did hit Korea around 6am this morning. I heard strong winds outside around that time but fell back to sleep pretty soon after noticing. I've read online that there was some significant damage- 3 people died, there were power outages, lots of fallen trees and closures of all the subway lines that don't run underground. Where we live there wasn't too much damage visible. A tree next to our apartment was a whole lot closer to our kitchen window this morning than it was last night, and there were a lot of fallen leaves on the on the walk to work. Speaking of work, both Mel and I had our morning classes canceled for the first 2 hours of the day... not that either of our schools felt this information was important enough to tell us. It all added up to a weird kind of day, and guess what? Another typhoon is on the horizon. We'll be tracking that one too...