Winter's here: it's time to sweat and shiver

I awoke on Monday to find that we had our first snow of the season on Monday. Now it’s Wednesday, there’s ice on the ground, and the doors are wide open. Chilly breezes slice through the open windows and ripple down the hallways. Students huddle in their North Face bubble jackets and schlep along in the cold.

Welcome to a Korean high school in the winter.

The doors never close here because the school buildings have no central heating. The open windows and doors supposedly help with airflow, or so I’m told. Scott, a former Cheorwon teacher, said recently that we’d have big mold problems here if the doors and windows weren’t kept open, so perhaps that’s the part of it too. I suppose that makes sense, but then again, the doors have gaps at the top, bottom, and (sometimes) middle to let air through anyway. I don’t know. I thought I’d get used to this after a year, but frankly, I haven’t. Perhaps it’s because I’m dreading seeing ice in the hallways again.

Meanwhile, the individual classrooms and offices have their own heaters that get jacked to near-sweatbox levels. As I write this, the office heater says 25 degrees Celsius, or 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Most classrooms hover around similar temperatures, so in other words, I’m either sweating or shivering when the winter comes here. The office gets too warm for comfort because the heat gets stifling.

The classrooms are the same way. Every time class starts, someone has to futz with the heating controls, especially during the first class because the heaters get turned off at night. It never seems to occur to the students that heaters need time to warm up to deliver the heat they want. And invariably, the students will set the heater on 30C, or 86F—while wearing winter jackets. All of the fuss over the heat’s starting to get on my nerves—yes, teenage students will do these things, but even so, it seems as though they’d have gotten used to winters here by now.

This cold/hot dichotomy makes things a bit unpleasant here. It’s certainly trying my patience to walk out of the cold into a similarly cold school in the morning or to constantly put on and take off my winter jacket.

*Funny enough, I’ve found that people will crank the heaters to 78 in cold weather, but will run for the AC when the outside temperature hits 78. Strange stuff

Backtracks: A spring hail storm

Here comes some more inclement weather to complement the typhoon:

This happened back in the spring. I was just about to leave school when a thunderstorm broke out and let loose a torrent of rain and hail in Cheorwon. Some of the teachers and staff came out to watch the hail fall because they'd never seen anything like it before.

The rain and hail lasted for about 20 minutes before it went away.

All's okay on the northern front for now

[Update 2: it's 6:55am and there's no sign of rain yet. How'd the rest of the country fare? Will the schools reinstate classes after all? Is that even possible?]

[Update: It's 11:25pm here and the weather's calm. Is it the calm before the storm? We'll have to see...so far so good]

While Tropical Storm Isaac is making its way toward the Gulf region of the USA, Typoon Bolaven's on the way up the East China sea and will go past western South Korea before landing in North Korea. You can see the map of the typhoon's progress here. Everyone's expecting heavy winds and rains here in Cheorwon. Some of my students have made dire predictions about people dying, but the Korean teachers seem largely nonchalant about the coming storm. "It's no big problem," says my co-teacher Mr. Choi. Both my two schools and Kirsten's two schools have cancelled classes for the students tomorrow. Dong Song's off as well. Rochelle mentioned that Seoul's getting an off day as well, but for all the closings and coming crummy weather, we and our fellow teachers still have to come in. Getting to school tomorrow should be interesting if I can't get a ride. We'll see how that one goes; I would've had 5 classes tomorrow, so I welcome the break from a busy day and can now concentrate on planning further ahead.

All's fine 'round the DMZ for now, as it's around 8 o'clock at night here and it's like most other summer nights--warm and humid with clouds overhead. I made a quick run to the grocery store on the way home to buy food and water. People didn't look like they were in any hurry. The store's stock of 6-packs of 2-liter water jugs had taken a hit though, so perhaps people are worried about the coming rains. We've already had plenty of torrential downpours here anyway, so a few more rainstorms probably won't make any difference. The rainy season started at the end of June and has yet to stop. We may get a half or full day of sunny weather, but the clouds and the rain always come back.

This link has more information. Here's to everyone riding out the storm and staying dry. Have a drink for those in Jeju and everywhere else that's going to get hit. The same goes for everyone in the US's Gulf region.

Tonight's music's some classic rock and roll about harsh weather and hard times:

Led Zeppelin - When The Levee Breaks

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising