What Time Is It?

Thanks to Sweden, I can't tell time anymore.

No, seriously.

In so many different ways.

Let's start with daylight savings.  Or lack thereof.  We set the clocks back earlier than the US, which means winter hours started even sooner here.  Now that the clocks have set back, the sun officially sets before 4 pm these days.

3:56 pm today, to be precise.

In one month, it will be setting at 3 pm.  And it won't rise again until almost 9 am.

Right now, it gets pitch black by 4:30.  It's lunchtime here and I only have a few hours of sunlight left in the day.

My body clock refuses to catch up.  I can't tell what time of day it is anymore.  I look around in the dark, swear it must be almost midnight, and look at a clock only to discover it's dinnertime.

And the dates?  Just one more thing...

I grew up with the American system, which - no surprise - is different than how everyone else in the world does it.  Today is November 5, 2009 or 11/05/09.  But not here.  It's 5 November 2009.  Or 05/11/09.  Or maybe 09/11/05.  If you ask someone to write the month and day, you get day and month.  But when they ask for your birth date on a form, you write year then month then day.  I start getting lost in it all.  Every time I see a number, I first see it with 27 years of American eyes, then try to correct it for the new system... usually incorrectly.

I can't tell whether our milk expires next week or already did sometime in last year.

I can't wait for October 10 of next year, when I can once again be guaranteed that I won't screw up writing the date.

And then there's actually asking or telling the time, which I try to avoid like the plague.  I have successfully avoided learning this so far when studying Swedish with Jenny.  It seems silly to me, so my brain tries to shut it out.  But now we're studying it in Swedish class.  So I have to.

Ask me what time it is when I'm in the US and you get a nice, simple, straightforward and efficient answer.

12:35.  Twelve thirty-five.  Three words.  Two numbers.  Easy.

Here?  No such luck.

Fem över halv ett.

Translation: Five past half of one.

Eh?

Everything else is quarter past or five til or ten of...

And this doesn't even begin to address my brain's half-second that it needs every time it sees military time because everything here is on the 24-hour clock.

And there's still my constant thinking in terms of time zones whether I am thinking of Illinois, where my family and most friends are (7 hours behind), or San Francisco, where other friends are (9 hours behind), or New York and the east coast (6 hours behind) or Denver, where my brother lives (8 hours behind).

Of course, until the clocks rolled back in the US last weekend, there were a few weeks where I had to retrain myself to think of things in terms of 6, 8, 5, and 7 hours behind, respectfully.

Oh, and let's not forget the times of the day as well.

If it is 7 am, officially morgon or "morning," I would say godmorgon or "good morning."  So, then i morgon, which literally means "in the morning", must mean "in the morning", right?

Wrong.

It means "tomorrow."

And then there's middag, commonly known as "noon" in the US.  That word has two meanings as well.  It's also a meal.

Oh, so it must mean "lunch", right?

No, silly.  It means "dinner".  Lunch means "lunch".

Which is pronounced "loonch".  Or loon/sj/, which is a sound I can't properly type out on this American keyboard and also can't properly make with these American lips.  It's kind of like the noise you would make if you were blowing out a candle while also throwing in a quiet "H" and "W".

So, just to clarify, you eat lunch at middag which is followed by the time known as eftermiddag which is immediately followed by eating middag.

My brain hurts.

I'm gonna take a nap.

Wake me up...

...

...whenever.

The Sudden Growth in Maturity Chronicles: No. 2

Continuing signs that international travel is causing my sense of maturity to grow by leaps and bounds...

I giggled at this one for several minutes...



This one time, Tom, Jeff, and I went to the OCB in Bloomington (Old Country Buffet for the layperson...) We went over lunch and decided to take the Buffet Challenge in the old College Hills Mall. OCB is rumored to put additives in their food (particularly the mashed potatoes) which fill you up faster, thereby depriving you of the Nausea-Inducing FatFest you rightfully paid for. We are Americans, dammit, and demand to stuff our faces in such away that we come out having gotten our money's worth!!!

The trick is to fill up your plates with as much as you can and sit down, scarfing the first plate as quickly as possible. No pacing yourself, folks, this is for serious! You have to get that first plate down your gullet and back up to the line before your brain or stomach are even aware of what happened. Then you start in on the second plate. A little slower now, as you don't want to burst a gasket. The real goal is to try to get onto the third plate before feeling sick. Maybe even dessert.

And important tip is to never use a straw when drinking... it only adds air to your stomach and will seriously decrease your odds of success. In fact, try to avoid drinking anything at all until the very end, as the liquid will only cause things in your stomach to swell.

Anyway, we all made it most of the way through three plates. I do believe I held my own against two mighty competitors who are at least a bit bigger than me in size.

We sighed the sigh of victory and staggered out to my car. I was feeling pretty good about the ordeal, but Tom and Jeff looked considerably less happy. In fact, this was the very day we felt Jeffery's pregnant little belly and discovered just how taut it had become. Rock hard. He just might have a baby...

"Let's just go home," moaned Tom.

"I need to go to the bathroom," cried Jeff.

"I feel pretty good," I replied.

On the way out of the parking lots I hit several potholes, causing a series of loud moans to emit from my fellow passengers.

"Watch the road," moaned Tom.

"I don't feel so good," cried Jeff.

"I'll do what I can," I replied.

I proceeded to hit each and every bump and pothole I could find on the ride home. My passengers sounded miserable and violent and may have become physically aggressive towards me if it weren't for the fact that they were holding their stomachs so tightly.

"I think I'm going to die," moaned Tom.

"I think I might poo a little," cried Jeff.

"I think I'll take the scenic route!" I replied.

The moral or the story is this: There is no moral.

We have always known that inflicting this kind of trauma upon your friends can be amusing.

What we didn't know was this: Speed bumps in Sweden hinder farts.

But only in Sweden.

I wish I had known this. Try as I might, not one bump that I hit on that fateful afternoon did a bit of good to hinder any gastrointestinal problems my friends were having.

And that made my ride home uncomfortable.

Next time, let's hit the buffet over here, fellas!