So, exciting couple of days I’ve had! That little tropical storm that I blogged about yesterday morning turned into a full on Category 4 Typhoon (known as a hurricane in the Atlantic) and headed to come on land just a smidge west of Hong Kong in the middle of the night.

Yesterday afternoon, when it started heading north towards HK and became a slow moving Category 1 storm, I decided to ditch the free night I earned at Best Western and pack up. I then headed out in the torrential rain, that no umbrella would have protected me from, to see if I could get a train back to Guangzhou.

Category 1 in the afternoon, local HK time…

There were two reasons I wanted out of HK… 1. I was staying on the top floor (37th) of a hotel on a small island and 2. I had an interview to do in the morning and didn’t want to let the hospital down.
I got to the train ticket office, soaking wet, only to be told, “NO” 😦

The good thing about the typhoon was that I was forced to actually relax and I never lost my Internet connection! I chatted with Miri for awhile and her wit kept me distracted. Then, around 930 pm I thought I was having vertigo because the room was moving… Well the room WAS moving, the wind was howling and a peek at http://www.wunderground.com told me this…

Yes, a Category FOUR hurricane with winds that were shaking the building!
I took this shot of the outside…

So, while I’m Facebooking updates and pretending all is well with the world I’m freaking out and scared… Thank God my friend Teri popped up to chat…. Teri, you calmed me down and distracted me and I’m so grateful 🙂 I took a Lunesta and decided to sleep it away… Gently rocked (literally) to sleep by the winds!

I woke up at 515 to get ready to go to the train. The winds were still quite high and it was pouring rain. The concierge said that the subways were working and that my train was delayed because of trees on the track. I thought I’d risk it and go anyway. My train left just 13 minutes late!

My trusty personal assistant, Rose, met me at the station in Guangzhou and off to the interview we went. The interview was for a company called qq and it was about my passion, water birth. Here we are during the interview…

And the storm has followed me north… Downgraded to a Cat 3 typhoon now. Very odd that I had no idea about this storm until I was in the middle of it. At home, in Florida, everyone would be broadcasting around the clock if there was a storm brewing like that! No storefronts boarded up this morning and the street pork guy was opening his shop while I made my way to the subway! Different perspectives, different countries… Ahhhh, what an interesting life I lead 🙂

Ciao!