Twelve Days Before Christmas
In which someone in the Philippines to research natural disasters ends up being caught in one. December 13, 2015: 10:00 AM Sorsogon City , Sorsogon It's Sunday morning in Sorsogon, my new home in the Philippines (how did I get here? Stay tuned for a long explanation in a future blog post!). The weather is typical for December in Bicol, the long, skinny peninsula hanging off of southeastern Luzon; pleasantly cool for the Philippines (80 degrees fahrenheit), and alternating between partly sunny and rainy and drizzling. The only sign that there's something wrong is the posts I see on Facebook warning of an approaching typhoon: Typhoon Melor , or Nona, as it's referred to here (the Philippines has its own typhoon naming system that it uses for storms that enter its area of responsibility). It was originally named "Nonoy", but that was quietly changed when it was realized it had an unfortunate resemblance to Noynoy, the nickname of the current president