Hi all! Thanks for your concern over the past week of typhoon-related shenanigans. I'll share with you here what my first month has been like.
So when I arrived in Xiamen they told me I'd have to switch apartments from the one they had given me in June. Fortunately it was just one floor above my old one. The reason given was "the internet doesn't work so you need to move". I have no idea why they couldn't just fix the internet. Also, in my new apartment the internet didn't work anyway because of course it didn't.
The old washing machine was better than the new one so I decided to switch them. Seemed easy enough. However when I went to snap the water hose onto the tap the whole tap snapped in half. That's right. I was able to snap a metal tap with my bare hands. Either Chinese food has made me immensely strong or the candy metal they use here simply gave up on life.
Water was flying everywhere. Fortunately I knew where the master valve was to turn it off for the whole apartment. But now I had a tap broken off inside the wall with no way to get it out.
I went downstairs and managed to convey my problem to a guard. He said someone would come by
in the afternoon. Amazingly he came by quite soon after. He looked at it said "30 kuai" (about $6) then pointed to a shop right downstairs and told me to get a new tap. I got one for 20 kuai and when I came back up he had it fixed. This is a major success story for me!
In my first month here I've managed to meet a lot of people. It's been really fun.
Then Meranti decided to come. Everyone who had been here for a long time laughed and said that every year a typhoon comes and there are warnings saying that it will be awful and then they kept a bit of wind and rain it's it's done. They all said not to worry. They were wrong. Meranti hit with winds around 200kpm after it annoyingly missed Taiwan so it didn't lose any force. It also hit Xiamen dead-center. They say it was the biggest storm to hit the area since 1959 however the wording says it was the biggest "since records started being kept in 1959" which makes me believe it's the biggest one they've every recorded.
90% of the street trees were uprooted. I'm not going to write out the whole experience here, rather I added captions in most of the pictures I put up. If you want to know, please check out the gallery.
Most people were without power the next morning but it was quickly restored to some (read: upper class) areas. The school had power the next day and the area where most of the other teachers live had power about 4 days later. I stayed a night at a friend's house at that time.
Fortunately my complex had a generator which would run occasionally and give us water as well as power one elevator which was a welcome reprieve. This, combined with my huge power bank, let me get through it but by day 7 I was tired of not being able to sleep anywhere except on my balcony hammock so I packed a suitcase.
I went out to get a few things done and I timed it to be back when I believed the generator would be running. When I got back it was off. I asked when it would start and they told me it "didn't have" something. I assumed they meant it had no more gas so I climbed the 18 floors carrying to large pictures I had just gotten framed. I got to the top exhausted, just in time to hear the generator start up.
I figured I'd take advantage so I grabbed my suitcase and headed for the elevator. I told my boss I was going to come to the school and stay in one of the empty dorms until the power was back. On the way down the elevator stopped and the fix-it guy got in. He said he thought the power would be back that afternoon. It left me with a tough decision of what to do. I decided to go back up and wait. About 10 minutes later the power came back. So I was quite glad I didn't leave.
I started classes this week. The class sizes are massive to be teaching spoken English. Ideally a class would have about 8 students. All mine have 45-60. Their levels are also all over the place so it's going to be an interesting challenge.
The typhoon has also messed up the holidays. I was supposed to get 3 weeks off in October while the freshmen did military drills but now the military is busy cleaning up so they're too busy so now I just get the standard one week. I know most of you won't really feel pity for me in that. However that one week is insane to go anywhere as the entire country travels so you pretty much have to stay home. I was going to use the subsequent weeks to go somewhere cool. Oh well, guess I'll have to wait until January.
Thank you all for your concern! Please look through the pictures and comment if you're interested.
Josh
Note: Google has annoyingly gotten rid of Picasa which was an excellent way for me to upload and share pictures. If you click the pictures link on the right it will show you all my old albums but it will not include anything after that cut-off date. Now the only way to share is to link each new album. There's no way to give you a link where you can see all the albums. This is frustrating for anyone who wants to go back through albums. I guess the only real option is to create a link on each post to each album created after July 2016. For now it's just the one.
Meranti typhoon album
Also note, I've added a lot of captions to the pictures but the writing is quite small at the bottom of the screen so I hope you don't miss it.
So when I arrived in Xiamen they told me I'd have to switch apartments from the one they had given me in June. Fortunately it was just one floor above my old one. The reason given was "the internet doesn't work so you need to move". I have no idea why they couldn't just fix the internet. Also, in my new apartment the internet didn't work anyway because of course it didn't.
The old washing machine was better than the new one so I decided to switch them. Seemed easy enough. However when I went to snap the water hose onto the tap the whole tap snapped in half. That's right. I was able to snap a metal tap with my bare hands. Either Chinese food has made me immensely strong or the candy metal they use here simply gave up on life.
Water was flying everywhere. Fortunately I knew where the master valve was to turn it off for the whole apartment. But now I had a tap broken off inside the wall with no way to get it out.I went downstairs and managed to convey my problem to a guard. He said someone would come by
in the afternoon. Amazingly he came by quite soon after. He looked at it said "30 kuai" (about $6) then pointed to a shop right downstairs and told me to get a new tap. I got one for 20 kuai and when I came back up he had it fixed. This is a major success story for me!
In my first month here I've managed to meet a lot of people. It's been really fun.
Then Meranti decided to come. Everyone who had been here for a long time laughed and said that every year a typhoon comes and there are warnings saying that it will be awful and then they kept a bit of wind and rain it's it's done. They all said not to worry. They were wrong. Meranti hit with winds around 200kpm after it annoyingly missed Taiwan so it didn't lose any force. It also hit Xiamen dead-center. They say it was the biggest storm to hit the area since 1959 however the wording says it was the biggest "since records started being kept in 1959" which makes me believe it's the biggest one they've every recorded.
90% of the street trees were uprooted. I'm not going to write out the whole experience here, rather I added captions in most of the pictures I put up. If you want to know, please check out the gallery.
Fortunately my complex had a generator which would run occasionally and give us water as well as power one elevator which was a welcome reprieve. This, combined with my huge power bank, let me get through it but by day 7 I was tired of not being able to sleep anywhere except on my balcony hammock so I packed a suitcase.
I went out to get a few things done and I timed it to be back when I believed the generator would be running. When I got back it was off. I asked when it would start and they told me it "didn't have" something. I assumed they meant it had no more gas so I climbed the 18 floors carrying to large pictures I had just gotten framed. I got to the top exhausted, just in time to hear the generator start up.
I figured I'd take advantage so I grabbed my suitcase and headed for the elevator. I told my boss I was going to come to the school and stay in one of the empty dorms until the power was back. On the way down the elevator stopped and the fix-it guy got in. He said he thought the power would be back that afternoon. It left me with a tough decision of what to do. I decided to go back up and wait. About 10 minutes later the power came back. So I was quite glad I didn't leave.I started classes this week. The class sizes are massive to be teaching spoken English. Ideally a class would have about 8 students. All mine have 45-60. Their levels are also all over the place so it's going to be an interesting challenge.
The typhoon has also messed up the holidays. I was supposed to get 3 weeks off in October while the freshmen did military drills but now the military is busy cleaning up so they're too busy so now I just get the standard one week. I know most of you won't really feel pity for me in that. However that one week is insane to go anywhere as the entire country travels so you pretty much have to stay home. I was going to use the subsequent weeks to go somewhere cool. Oh well, guess I'll have to wait until January.
Thank you all for your concern! Please look through the pictures and comment if you're interested.
Josh
Note: Google has annoyingly gotten rid of Picasa which was an excellent way for me to upload and share pictures. If you click the pictures link on the right it will show you all my old albums but it will not include anything after that cut-off date. Now the only way to share is to link each new album. There's no way to give you a link where you can see all the albums. This is frustrating for anyone who wants to go back through albums. I guess the only real option is to create a link on each post to each album created after July 2016. For now it's just the one.
Meranti typhoon album
Also note, I've added a lot of captions to the pictures but the writing is quite small at the bottom of the screen so I hope you don't miss it.
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