Oven & Power Outage

Yay, we got our oven! Today after school the delivery guys got the extra stove+oven from the basement of the school and brought it to my apartment. Yay, now I have an oven. Hopefully the gas company can send someone over tomorrow so I can have a *working* oven *grin*. Anyhow, when we got to my place, the power was out. I wasn't able to find out why until the power came back on so I could look it up on the internet. I did bump into one of my students outside (woohoo, someone who speaks English!!!) and he told me that he was on the phone and he had friends in Seoul who were also without power. I couldn't imagine what could cause the power to go out across a whole country! Part of the problem is that I forget that Korea is more the size of Kentucky or Indiana, and states in the US have been known to have a statewide power outage.

Apparently, several Korean power plants thought the hot summer weather was over, so they shut down for some maintenance before needing to supply power for winter weather. Unfortunately, the temps came back up; it was 85˚ (30˚ C) all night in my apartment, and it got hotter during the day. So lots of air conditioners got used and the national power level dropped so low they had to cut off power to certain areas. Now it's back up, but there's no guarantee the power will stay on -- they might have to cut it off again to avoid a national shutdown.

Happily our stove is gas, so we'd be able to cook. Unfortunately, our fridge won't do so well. Alas, I don't have large quantities of ice, nor do I know where to buy ice locally. So for the sake of my groceries (and my internet connection) I hope the power stays on :)