Up Early . . . Again

Turkey could benefit from more than one time zone. In Erzurum, the call to prayer starts around 4 am, and the sun rises around 4:30. After all this time, my body still thinks when the sun rises, it is time to wake up. I end up waking up hours before necessary, and that means I am so exhausted at the end of the day that I fall asleep embarrassingly early. Usually I sleep around 10 (early, I know), but on Saturday I fell asleep just after 8 pm. Geez Louise. Am I 90 years old?

E has no trouble staying up late and sleeping in late. Yesterday, he had to wake up early for his soccer/football match. The sun was actually shining, and he came home with a burnt face. Who knew that even olive skin burns (I definitely know that pasty white skin burns). Then last night, when he couldn’t find it online, he went out to watch an important football match. All the top teams were playing to determine the league champion.

When he came home, E was soaking wet. Was it raining again? Nope, it was sweat. He had run all the way home. After the matches simultaneously finished, and the “wrong” team won the championship, he said massive fighting broke out in the city. Hundreds of people were throwing fists, and the riot police were called in.

Fortunately, my sweet husband was perfectly sober and ran home instead of joining in. I appreciated that he ignored his Turkish “machismo,” thought about his wife at home, and remembered if he ever gets arrested, even as a bystander, he will never receive a visa to the US. I’m sure I’ll go to work today and see many students with bruised faces.