Thursday, December 5, 2013

Who knew

Who knew hurricanes hit Germany? Of course, living in North Carolina, I've become used to getting hurricanes, but I never experienced one in Germany.
Luckily we're just getting the traces from the storm, but everyone here is freaking out. While North Carolinians are able to cope with hurricanes because they happen several times a year, this is a very rare occurrance in Germany (especially in my area, where we aren't even that close to the water), so no one is ever really prepared for them. As an honorary North Carolinian, I tend to think of a hurricane as not such a big deal, unless it's absolutely huge. Here, even just getting the end traces of the hurricane, it's made into a big deal. It's kind of interesting to see, actually. I'm just calm and everyone around me only has their minds on the storm, which I'd classify as a typical NC storm. Very windy, a bit rainy, cold. Maybe we don't get so much of the "cold" since they usually happen in the summer and spring in NC, but the rest is normal. So I'm just quietly sitting here, while everyone is panicking and closing the schools and cancelling religious holiday celebrations (yeah, afternoon classes got cancelled, as well as the St. Nick walk-around-town thing that happens here). Meanwhile, NC closes schools for non-existent snow, while we go to school in snow unless we're literally blockaded in at the door by snow.
This all goes to show how different environments create different types of preparedness among the people. Those who are used to tropical storms vs. those who aren't go about the same storm in very different manners: calm and rational vs. panicky. Those who aren't so used to snow vs. those who are go about the same precipitation in extremely different manners: closed schools on an inch of snow vs. schools still open with three feet of snow.
The things we learn from storms.

Yeah, so that's been my day. Storm this, storm that, storm blahblahblah.

I also tutored a kid for an hour in English (we just finished at 4pm)...
I'd make a video but it's too dark outside.

Anyways, I hope you learned something new about handling natural disasters. Personally I just think everyone needs to calm down, both in NC and Germany. It's not that disastrous guys, really.

Thanks for reading!
Bye!

EDIT: I did end up making a video. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3bexclcpVA

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