The Blog

Typhoons (or cyclones) actually aren't as scary as you think they'd be. Above: people in Shanghai during Typhoon Koppu.

One of the weirder (or cooler?) things about living in Southeast Asia is typhoon season. (Typhoons are basically the Asian version of hurricanes).

Being from Michigan, I’ve never had the experience of living through any type of cyclone season. Typhoons and hurricanes always seemed so distant. News reports made the hurricane/typhoon zones seem dangerous.

Naturally I was a little worried two weeks ago when I experienced my very first typhoon.

Typhoon Koppu hit my province (Guangdong) on September 14. It ran a ship aground in Zhuhai, a city about three hours from here. It also shut down the markets in Hong Kong for a morning. Hong Kong is less than an hour away from here.

On the night of the 14th, my school’s contact teacher called to let me know that Luoling would be closed the next day. That night, the downpour was pretty heavy with strong winds.

But by the next morning, the storm had passed. It was replaced by light rains.

Having the day off reminded me of the snow days we always had in Michigan. And apparently typhoon days in China happen as often as snow days back home. I wonder what the equivalent of snow day sledding would be on a typhoon day …