bubbly fun.

Now I’m only an hour difference from home.  An hour.  That’s nothing.  Also, I wrote this about daylight savings time last year… thought I would share on this magical day.  It was published on WorldTeach’s website for a few months, you know, I was famous.

Here you go:

Besides a somewhat regular update to the dirt road leading through town, everything mostly stays the same in Las Tumbas.  Not to say that life is boring, but in this small town of about 100 people, life is stagnant.  The same families work the same jobs, usually share the same names and even nicknames, have the same schedule… you can always count on seeing your neighbors on the Friday bus at 6 am, the only one that will venture down the steep hill to town.  It’s a comfortable life.  Even the sun, in tune with the steadiness of life here, rises around 5:00 every morning and sets at just about 6:00 every evening, throughout the whole year.

After three months of my mom calling me every Sunday night at 7:00, it had become just another welcome routine in my Costa Rican life.  So when she called one fateful evening an hour early due to Daylight Savings time, my family could not hide their curiosity, especially since she called right as we were sitting down to dinner, as we always did at six.

“Why did your mom call an hour early?” Ericka, my younger host sister asks me.  Thinking hard about how to explain this, my mind never stumbles upon the easy way out, to lie and tell them that, perhaps my mom was going out to a restaurant with her husband that night or even that there was a television show on that she wanted to watch instead of talking to me, both rather foreign ideas in themselves to my Costa Rican family.  Instead, I told the truth.

“Well… In the U.S….There’s this thing….Where you change your clocks,”  I told them.  Blank stares.  I continued, telling them that there’s one day where you move your clocks ahead one hour “to make more daylight.”  Luckily, my Spanish was advanced enough to convey the words, but have you ever tried to explain Daylight Savings Time to someone who doesn’t participate in it?  Much less, in a different language?

“You can’t make more daylight,” they tell me,  “Por supuesto.”  Of course, they say, looking at me like I suddenly need to be put in an asylum.  “Well…I know, but it’s a way of changing time so people can enjoy the sunlight more, or save daylight,”  I say.  Somehow, with the mention of enjoyment, something clicks in Ericka’s head.

“Oh, so it’s a joke?  You change the clocks back tomorrow?”  she asks, excitedly, proud that she is the first to understand this weird event.  After a few more attempts at explanation, telling Ericka that the clocks won’t change back for six months and that everyone has to participate, I relax, thinking that I’ve explained sufficiently.

One last question occurs to Ericka, “What happens if you don’t change your clock?”  “You’ll have the wrong time for six months,” I answer.  As weird as this custom seems to them, it begins to seem just as strange to me.  Many of the things I took for granted at home are rare or completely unavailable here, and probably won’t be for a while.  And as my family debates whether my mom will start to call every Sunday at 6:00, instead of 7:00, and what affect this will have on our dinner schedule, I realize how happy and comfortable I’ve become in this ever non-changing life.  I can’t rely on internet, hot water, a grocery store or my favorite restaurant around the corner, or understanding every word that is said to me in Spanish.  But I can count on that tomorrow morning, when I wake up at 5 am, breakfast will be made, the radio will be on, the kids will be fighting, a rooster will be crowing outside of my window, and the sun will be rising.