Typhoon, Shmyphoon!

One of the exciting/frightening parts of life in Hong Kong is the threat of typhoons.  Typhoons are hurricanes that take place in the western Pacific, just to give you an idea of how serious and destructive they can be.  Typhoon warnings come in levels 1, 3, 8, 9, and 10.  At level 3, schools are cancelled and government agencies begin to close.  At a level 8, the whole place shuts down.  Even the trains run on limited to no service.  This year we had the first level 10 in thirteen years, Typhoon Vicente. 

 I had imagined we'd be able to watch the storm roll in over the city, but our view looked more like a giant white screen - we couldn't see anything through the heavily pouring rain!  The storm went from a level 8 in the evening to a 10 around midnight.  Thankfully we had closed all our curtains for fear of broken windows.  Around 2:20 in the morning we were woken by a loud crashing on our bedroom window.  Our neighbor's window had actually broken and all the glass blew around in the wind and crashed against our window.  While it did not crack (hallelujah!) it was scratched up from all the broken glass - on all faces of the window, which wraps around a corner.  It really goes to show you how nuts that wind was!!!  The next morning we found that another of our windows was cracked but had thankfully not blown out.  

The next day only puddles seemed to remain, so we headed out for some splish-splashing!  Who doesn't love some good puddle jumping??