Typhoon 1 - Cyclones 0

After 4 days of HEAVY rain, and some winds, I'm out looking for the olive branch. So far I haven't found one and even though the rain seems to have stopped for longer than 10 seconds for the first time since Sept 11th, I'm still thinking I should be building an Ark right about now.

Our first major Typhoon is over! Granted we didn't see the severity of the Hurricane Ike as they did in Texas, but we did get a full hit from Typhoon Sinlaku. What did we do during the Typhoon? Well since pretty much everything closes (few places to eat which saved us), we played a lot of video games (Super Mario Brothers 1 and 3... Mario Kart Wii which Sarah is NOT a fan of yet) and watched a lot of movies. Day 1 was kind of fun sleeping in knowing there was no reason to get up. When we did walk around a little outside, most places have put tape on the windows (in case something comes crashing into it) and the wind gusts at time were kind of nasty. Pretty much like an Iowa Thunderstorm, but lasts for 3 days or more. It did kill the plans for the Moon Festival which was this weekend. Supposedly it's a big weekend for grilling out but that was pretty much dropped by most people.

This weekend was the Mid-Autumn Festival, otherwise known as "Moon Festival". It's a Chinese holiday celebrated for over 3000 years by worshiping the Moon. There are celebrations (when there aren't Typhoons going on around you) and some of the other traditions include eating Moon cakes, lighting laterns, burning incense (as they seem to do every day around here), planting trees, and doing funny dances. We saw lots of "burning" things in the street as they do on every holiday, but wasn't really a weekend to enjoy the other things. Here's what moon cakes look like:



I think they float... which was important this past weekend. I've never seen so much rain in 4 days. Surprisingly Taipei is built well enough to not experience any flooding.

This past weekend was also the ISU/Iowa game. I think Iowa won since my girlfriend hasn't stopped singing Iowa fight songs for the past 2 days. I told her I told my boys to go easy this year so she could have her victory for once. Looks like ISU played a decent game but couldn't get in the endzone when it mattered. Did we try the "Draw up the middle" play????

We have a 3 day weekend coming up in October. Debating between going to Beijing or Vietnam. We should probably make up our mind this week and start making plans. Any suggestions???