Well, I've been here three months now and the weather has finally changed. The winter that would never end has given way to balmy nights, hot days, humid air, and blazing hot mornings in my apartment (the windows face east, which means that I cannot keep my apartment below 88 degrees in the morning). At my yoga studio (I did end up joining one that was better, cheaper and did not involve stomach molestation), they no longer need to heat the room for hot yoga. Restaurants have moved seating outdoors and my stingy director has even given in to turning on the air conditioner in the school so that the children will not die of heat stroke.
In keeping with my environmental nut-case ways, I have avoided turning on my AC yet (this might help with the whole 88 degrees thing, but I am a stubborn mule when I want to be). Instead, I have employed the use of a trusty fan. Or at least, so I thought...
Turns out in Korea, fans are not so trusty.
Unbeknownst to the rest of the modern world is the strange urban legend that having a fan on in a closed room will kill a sleeping person. This phenomenon is known as Fan Death. I'm not exactly sure where this idea came from, as it only exists in South Korea, but Korean reporters have regularly claim that a number of people have died in the summer due to fan related causes.
Now, I haven't really tested this one out on many Korean adults yet, but many of the students at the school have assured my coworkers and I that Fan Death is a real thing. We will apparently die because the moving fan blades will cut up the air so small that we will not be able to breathe it...
Most fans sold in Korea come with timers so you can set them to turn off before they kill you in your sleep.
So now I'm tempted to ride on bus number 4 (the Korean superstitious number- my school does not have a bus number 4 even though there are 4 buses. We skip from 3 to 5.) on Friday the 13th as a black cat crosses my path. When I get home I will open an umbrella indoors. Then I will shatter a mirror as I walk under a ladder to get to my bed where I will sleep with a fan on.
I can disrespect superstitions multi-culturally!
(Much love to all my superstitious readers.)
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