Body Clock!

Having grown up and gone though my entire primary, secondary and tertiary education in South Africa, a certain cycle of Southern Hemisphere life is entrenched in me. In South Africa, as with most Southern Hemisphere schools, the academic year begins a week or two into January. The smell of lush, green grass on the school sports fields, freshly mowed after the summer rains, heralds the arrival of a new year of possibilities, a new year of challenges, and a new year of mischief of some kind or other. The school year then plays out in the same routine. Four academic quarters of about 10 or 11 weeks filled with mornings in the classroom and afternoons out on the sports fields. During the year, each academic quarter is separated by a much anticipated break of anywhere between ten days to three weeks. During these vacations we would have the much needed “down time” from school, running around with our friends, riding our bicycles, swimming and generally getting up to innocent mischief. Come November/December and the end of the fourth quarter, we would write our end of year exams, attend the final assembly and prize giving and happily run the teachers over in our enthusiasm to get out the school gates and start six weeks of glorious summer vacationing. As well as occasional family trips to either the beach or mountains in one or other part of our beautiful country, these holidays would also bring with them Christmas and New Year celebrations, ultimately signifying the end of another year and the completion of another turn of the cycle.

You can imagine then my complete sense of having my world turned upside down by coming to teach in the Northern Hemisphere. If you have grown up in the Northern Hemisphere, then of course this cycle of things would make complete sense. But to me, starting the school year in August, having the academic quarters measured by report ‘due dates’ and not holidays, only two short school breaks (between 3 and 6 school days off for each) for Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years, neither of which signifies the start of a new year, all in the first 18 weeks of teaching, just sends my whole body clock out of sync. You can also understand then, how my mind is telling my body that the time of year is early January, which is associated with the first cutting of the lush, green grass, afternoon thunderstorms, and the beginning of a new cycle, yet my body is telling my mind that it is 2 degrees Celsius outside, the trees are bare and that running around in a pair of swimming shorts all day is just not an option right now.

I guess the point of all this is that is amazing how our lives are so dominated by routines, cycles and comfort zones, and it is only when we take ourselves out of those routines completely that we become aware of them. Therefore I am going to go and crack a beer on this frosty Saturday here in the Northern hemisphere and celebrate this wintery January and all its un-cyclical beauty, all while quietly praying for a couple of snow days.