Typhoons and Vacation

As we finish up this period of teaching we have gone through several typhoons or tropical storms. The typhoons were both natural and in our school. First, we have had three storms come by our way: Typhoon Nuri (that hit us straight on), Typhoon Sinlaku (that went north of us) and Typhoon Hagupit (just went south of us on September 23rd). Oh, there is more to come. Tropical Storm Jangmi is on its way to hit Taiwan at the end of this month. In all three cases the damage around us was bad but for us it has been rather minor. Since the typhoon season is in its prime we will expect more. The order of events weather wise is: oppressive heat and humidity with overcast, followed by winds and rain that brings cool temperature. Then the storm hits followed by normal heat and humidity. I cannot wait for cool autumn and winter weather.
The typhoons in our school can be summarized in one word, madness! There is so much to cover academically, unexpected events like fire drills to a week long periodic school wide literacy testing. My students performed wonderfully to the lack of structure that today they were rewarded with “Game Day”. More storms are on its way and I see that this will be a long year.
As for our October break (which I think is to celebrate the founding of the PRC in 1949) I cannot find much information about the holiday. Eileen and I will chaperon two female high school students who are here on an exchange program at this school. The school was desperately looking for adults to chaperon and we were toward the bottom of the list. It worked out for us as our plans were falling apart. So we will go to the province of Guangxi, to the city of Guilin. The scenery along the Li River down from Guilin to Yangshuo should be fabulous per the second photo from the net. Then we travel by air to the province of Sichuan to the city of Chengdu (the top photo) Sichuan is where the big earthquake happened in May and is the home of the panda. Much like any popular vacation spot in the U.S., we will be there with many, many others in some sauna like weather. We will write more later folks!