Last weekend I could barely see the mountains. I mean, it was really bizarre.  The sky looked sepia…

I asked someone about it, and they said that it was the yellow dust from China.

Before, when I’d been told there was yellow dust and that it came from the deserts, I was a little skeptical and confused and also it didn’t seem that bad and I just wondered if it was hyped up health hysteria here.  The sky never looked that bad to me, even when half the people were donning the face masks.

So a couple days later I got the internet and turned on CNN.  Sure enough, winds from the Gobi desert had picked up huge amounts of sand and, after blowing across China had also picked up all the auto and factory pollutants.  Residents of Hong Kong were advised to stay indoors and the pollution had been measured at 10 times worse than normal.  And, the visibility was something like 6 times worse than a bad day in LA.

I now take yellow dust very seriously.  Maybe I should go buy a cute face mask.  There’s an endless variety of designs to choose from…

But this foreigner never really knows what the weather’s going to bring.  Every once in awhile, if something really exceptional is about to happen, someone might remember to warn me about it.  But mostly, the forecast is me sticking my head out the window because weather just isn’t on my mind.

Yesterday, walking home, it was snowing in flurries.  I texted Joyce and it wasn’t snowing in Anyang.  It’s almost April, and it’s still snowing in the mountains!