The furnace stopped working at the school where I work, but I couldn’t leave the school.
In fact, we had to remain at school for hours while the furnace was not working. If I would have been in the United States, we would have been sent home without the furnace. It is an obvious health hazard to have a ton of kids in a building without any heating system, but the principal of the foreign school would not send us home. Technically, the furnace did not break. If only one heating system would have stopped working in the school, we probably would have been able to relocate to a different classroom. Instead, the power went out in the entire school, so all of the heating systems stopped working. This was my first time teaching in a foreign school, but I still expected to have to send all of the kids home until they had the power turned back on. However, the principal came into the class and told us that we would continue teaching regardless of the furnace. Apparently, they wanted to wait a few hours to see if the furnace would randomly turn on. I had to bundle up, and I had all of my students working with their coats on. It only took one hour for the class to be freezing cold without the furnace, but the principal of the school still refused to send them home until noon. I am sad to say that this is not the first time that I have had to teach during the winter without a furnace.