Fan Death

For the past several weeks, Paul and I have been shocked at how dreadfully cold our schools have been. In late October, while fall was changing into winter, we didn’t yet have the heat on in our apartment. Our coworkers would ask us both regularly if we had turned the heat on, how it was working, etc. and we would both have to answer that we hadn’t yet felt it to be cold enough to turn the heat on. And though the heat was not on at school, the windows were closed.

So, when the first few days of real cold came, we were both surprised to find the windows at our schools wide open. I began to wear more and more layers; I brought a large wrap to school to wear over my shoulders or on my legs to keep me warm. I wore my scarf to class. I was confused. The people who wanted me to turn on the heat a few weeks ago were now trying to freeze me out. I caught a cold, and was quite miserable. I tried to explain that perhaps I was sick because of the cold air. My coworker laughed.

Last week, Paul walked to work in -8C/17F. When he arrived at work, all of the windows in his school were open. A half-hour later, they turned the heat on. Fortunately, Paul’s coworker opened all the windows in the classroom so that the students wouldn’t feel too warm. Paul, the Canadian, spent his day teaching in a winter coat.

At my school, things were a bit better. My office was a warm 24C/75F. The windows were open in the rest of the school. I began to wonder if it was a way to conserve electricity or gas, so I decided to ask the teachers I teach. “The outdoor air is very good for you. The indoor air is very bad. If you don’t change the air in a room – open the windows every two hours – you will get a very bad cough.” I explained that where I come from, we don’t usually open the windows when it’s cold outside. My student was very concerned. “You need to make sure you open the windows in your apartment. You can get very, very sick.”

I was very polite, and I’ve even opened the door to our enclosed porch-thing once; but I haven’t opened our windows - even for ten minutes. Our windows are not insulated, and the doors leading to the porch where our windows are, are also not well-insulated. So, we usually have some flow of air from the outside coming into our house. But I can still hear some of you saying, “maybe he’s not crazy; maybe the Koreans know what’s best for you.” To that statement, I have some arguments.

First of all, our apartment – which is on the first floor – looks out on a parking lot. The exhaust fumes are disgusting in this country. There are no regulations on the junk your car or truck can put in the air. And everyone drives. In our first three weeks here, I had four asthma attacks – more than I would have during a whole summer in smoggy Toronto.

Second, nothing can induce me to believe that it is beneficial to children or to adults to have all the windows open in the winter – or to have them open in the hallways while the classrooms are heated. There is a ten-degree (Celsius) difference between my office and the bathroom. I know this isn’t good.

And, most importantly, I can’t really believe the Koreans on this one because they believe in fan death. If I told the Koreans that Paul and I sleep with a fan on every night – with the doors and windows closed – they would gasp at the mortal danger we put ourselves in. When we first came, we wanted to buy a few more fans for our apartment, but they were all at least $40. We couldn’t figure out why they were so expensive. But now we know: every fan in Korea has a timer, so that you can make sure that it doesn’t run all night; it’s a safety feature to prevent fan death.

Koreans aren’t quite sure how the fan kills you. It might be suffocation (the fan creates a vortex sucking the air from the room), poisoning (the fan creates high levels of carbon dioxide), or hypothermia (the fan lowers your body temperature so much that you die). Whatever it is, I think I’ll continue to take my chances with closed windows to preserve heat and a fan for noise. I think I’m in more danger crossing the street.

(If you’d like to read more about fan death, visit www.fandeath.net, or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death.)