Monsoon Season

Hello, all. Katy, here. There's not much new to report this week, except that the heat has taken a break, finally. Korea has weather pretty similar to where I grew up, with hot muggy summers and cold dry winters.

What I mean when I say the heat has taken a break, is more that the monsoons appear to have passed and the humidity is back down to a reasonable 60-something%, rather than that the temperatures have dropped. It's regularly around the mid 30's, which I believe are mid-90's in Fahrenheit. Like I said, though, these temperatures are pretty normal for the south and I'm sitting comfy, so long as I'm not in the direct sun. As for those monsoons though... We have a small river running behind out apartment building on any normal day. Now what I found strange when we moved here was that the river bed was grossly oversized for the amount of water the river carried. It wasn't until a typhoon last year, and the monsoon season this year (our first since arriving), that I understood just why the river needed such a deep bed. The sheer amount of rain that can drop during those weeks was impressive, often thunder-storming at least twice a day for a few hours. I was packing J extra pairs of socks so he could change into dry ones at work, and we busted a couple umbrellas too. Interestingly, I've been told that usually the monsoon season starts earlier, and lasts a little longer. It must be a dry year. I've also been told that this year and last are seeing some impressive rises in the temperatures Koreans are used to. Good to know. Unlike the southern united states, or at least the ones I grew up with, the heat doesn't fade when the sun goes down. It stays hot here overnight, dropping just a few degrees. Nonetheless, this is the time of day that J and I have started taking our hikes and going for runs. At the very least, it rarely rains at night, and the sun isn't beating down.

Students are also out of school finally for summer break, meaning that J has a lot less work to do (though he still goes into school to desk warm). He'll be teaching at two summer camps, while I continue studying for the GRE, and life will resume to it's normal hustle and bustle in about a month. We will be taking a short vacation soon, so look for a heftier post in early August. Until then, that's all I've got for this week.

Hope everyone is staying cool stateside. I hear it's been a warm one out there, too.
-K