I Keep Reading,

that a cold snap is about to happen, 

and that we might have snow for Christmas, so going to work or school is going to be a bit chilly, but if you think our school kids have a cold time of it, spare a thought for the children of the small Russian settlement of Oymyakon, can you imagine sending your kids from years one through four to school at temperatures of -50° Celsius? Well, in Oymyakon, that’s pretty much standard procedure, as the one school in the rural locality only closes when temperatures drop under -52° Celsius. Children older than 11 have to be even tougher, as they get to stay home only when the temperature drops under -56° Celsius. Daytime temperatures around this time of year are around -50°C, which means that pupils of all ages have to brave the cold and get to school every morning, 

“Local kids walk to school with their parents and often with dogs, too; pupils from other villages have to take a bus to get here. The bus ride takes from 10 to 18 minutes,” local photographer Semyon Sivtsev recently told the Siberian Times. “I was filming around 9am on 8 December, and the temperature was -51°C. How cold did it feel? I had to keep my gloves on which wasn’t very comfortable, but otherwise my fingers would have been frostbitten, and I could only film in very short bursts.” Worse still in December, the sun rises at around 10am in Oymyakon, so at 9am, when school starts, it’s still dark outside, the kids stay at school until 5pm, about three hours after the sun sets, so they have to brave extremely low temperatures on their way back home as well, crickey, there was  me thinking it was cold and it was still one degree above the freezing point of water!