Measuring days

I remember back in my Study Abroad days, noting the different ways in which I tracked time in Ghana (like watching the malaria pills slowly disappear day by day.) There were all these tiny daily symbols reminding me about the the march of days.

I've noticed myself doing that here, too... I think it might have to do with the weather, and how much it stays the same.

Every day is cool in the morning and warm in the afternoon.  Light jacket needed for the trip to school, not necessary for the trip home. Sometimes it rains. Occasionally it is foggy in the morning. The trees are always green. The birds are always singing. But without seasonal changes like I'm used to, there's kind of this Groundhog Day feeling to being here. Every day kind of feels just like a carbon copy the one before. (This is why Nicole obsessively decorates for holidays...  she says it helps her keep track of the passage of time and reminds her that the world is still turning.) Teaching can also be kind of repetitive, in that you follow the same routines every day in the same order, so the days start to blend into one another.

I remember back home, the final block walk towards PS89 was one of my time-measurement tools, because it was the just a little bit different every day... Trudging over icy lumps in snowboots in January, noticing the sun a little bit higher each day with the onset of spring, whizzing by on my bike with wind in my hair in the lovely lamb-days of April and May, and walking it in sandals in September and June, trying to judge just how sweaty of a day it would turn out to be based on the early morning temperature and whether or not I already had pit-stains before 8am.

Here, the bus stop looks the same every morning. I only sweat if I'm working out.

Here I'm measuring my time with different tools. I'm measuring in laps around Parque Carolina (usually trailing behind Nicole and her speed-demon pug, Lola.) I'm measuring with my growing stack of Supermaxi receipts, which I'm supposed to keep for tax purposes, and with bouquets of flowers on the coffee table, because it's hard to resist buying flowers for yourself when they are so cheap and easy to come by.

At school I have a jar of marbles, and the kids add one more each time they finish a book... watching it fill up and then empty at the end each month has become another time tracker.  And I have this kind of circular wheel chart in the classroom that helps us keep track of the kids' Math Centers. Every time we turn the wheel its one-quarter clockwise rotation, it feels like the slow, deliberate turning of a gear.  One click closer to conquering the beast that is fifth grade math.

I never thought I'd miss winter. And mostly, I don't.  Every morning when I read the local weather report in the New York Times I kind of purse my lips and shake my head like, gee, windchill in the low teens, that's rough.  Cold and rainy in New York again? What a shame. Sleet in the forecast? Bummer.

But there is a small part of me that might appreciate winter a tiny bit more when I go home, not for the discomfort that it causes, nor for its bulky and cumbersome additional layers.  But the changing of the seasons makes time feel more cyclical and fleeting, and maybe more precious? Whereas here it feels kind of linear and unchanging. You show up at the bus stop and then you look behind you and somehow, five months have gone by.  I realized there is a part of me, a very small part, that sometimes likes measuring time also in snow days and snow boots, and that misses that feeling of man vs. nature when you bundle up to go outdoors in winter.

But there's another part of me that is perfectly content with it being 65 and sunny here, again.