"The $10,000 Mascot" and "Why don't they close the windows?"

It's official - I (Jon) am a $10,000 mascot. Not that I cost that much to be a mascot, nor that I earn that much for being a mascot. Last week was an English contest and, to cut a long story short, my school won. As I'm the foreign teacher at this school, and the school won somewhere around $10,000 (or $5,000 - accounts differ), I am the new mascot.

I really had very little to do with it - I teach the grade 7 students and it was the grade 8 students that were in the contest. I see them once a month, and a few of them more than that. However, over 100 students were in the competition, so I had far less to do with their success than may appear at first glance. However, I'm still the mascot: the school with the foreign teacher won the competition and (possibly more importantly) the money.

Woo me!


Which brings me to my next point. Sort of.

Schools in Korea have a basic design: hallway with classrooms on one side and a window to the outside on the other. There are slight variations but nothing too shocking. Also, Korean winter has come upon us. It's cold enough to be chilling to the bone (dang humidity!) but not so cold that any building is really built to withstand the cold. Single paned glass, all glass doors, and (of course!) windows open everywhere.

In Korea, there is a rather popular notion that if you have any sort of a fan on while you are sleeping and you don't have the window open, you will die. Experts disagree as to how this happens (the fan steals your breath, the oxygen in the room gets depleted, etc.) but it's a common enough belief. I've got no idea if that leads to most of the windows being open on December 7 or not, but it just might.

The poor students sit in their classroom (made mostly of concrete and therefore is not warm and cuddly) and discuss how cold they are. With the windows wide open.

Which brings me to my second and final point: Why don't they close the windows?