Swimming in city streets

First of all I'd like to say that we arrived home safe and sound from Hong Kong on Monday night.  We were supposed to arrive at noon on Monday but our 8:30am flight our was cancelled due to bad weather back home. That gave us the opportunity to spend 10 hours at the Hong Kong airport.  This is what I can say about the situation: first, the Hong Kong airport is really nice with good shops and lots of English magazines and books. Second, I will try to never book a flight with China Air again.  I had heard they weren't the most customer service oriented and now I believe it.  I think had it not been for my persistence we would still be in Hong Kong right now.  Probably sitting in the Burger King trying to get wifi reception. 

I had warned Sam that I would probably get depressed upon returning home like I did last time we went to Hong Kong.  Surprisingly enough I feel fine.  I'm happy to be back home and hearing Mandarin again.  As I had stated in my last blog the weather has been crazy here.  Wednesday proved to be the most exciting so far.  That evening we rode our bikes to a friends house and stayed late talking.  Just as we decided to go home a huge thunder storm broke out.  The wind was blowing so hard the trees started to looked sideways and it was raining hard for a long time.   The sky had a pinkish purple hue from all the lightning.  The weird thing was that the lightning didn't hit ground, it was just in the clouds lighting up the sky.  Our friends invited us to stay the night but we both wanted to go home and sleep in our own bed.  Where our bikes were parked a pool of mud was forming and mine had fallen over.  We decided it would be safer to walk until we found a taxi willing to drive us.  Although the rain had subsided a bit  there was water everywhere.  It looked like lakes and rivers instead of streets and crosswalks.  We ended up walking the whole way home because the only taxi's stopped were ones stuck in the water with their emergency lights on.  Many times the water was knee deep when crossing an alley or a small street.  In fact, we saw little waves come up and splash the buildings!  I found myself laughing quite a bit.  I wanted to take a picture but it was too dark and I only had my little i-touch with me.  When we finally arrived home we found more water in our apartment.  Our bedroom had pools of water by all the windows.  I used all the towels I had to soak it up.  At first we thought a window had been left open but they were all shut.  The wind had blown the rain in through the window sills.  The wall by my side of the bed obviously had a problem because it was cracked and swollen with water.  The water on the floor by it had bits of paint and drywall in it.  That's not a good sign!  We see our landlord next week and I will show her the damage then.  Sam says it would need to be fixed from the outside.  That's a big thing when you are talking about an apartment on the tenth floor.  Ah, the adventures of China city life.  Never a dull moment!