Sleeping

Written on March 3rd, 2010

So there are lots of elements of sleeping here that I find amusing. First, every night without fail at least one and usually a number of my host siblings fall asleep outside around the fire. This happens for a number of reasons:
1) their little/run around/work all day
2) they can't sleep very soundly with 2 to 3 people to a bed with at least 4 people in each room
3) it gets dark here around 7:30 or 8 pm and we don't eat dinner until at least 9
They usually fall asleep on a mat on the ground. To get them off the mat and into bed the tactics are usually to yell their name, yell at them to go to bed, hit them hard/repeatedly while yelling and finally if none of these tactics work dragging them by the arm (while still yelling) into the house while ordering them to wash and go to bed. I think its pretty clear that I don't really believe that this is the best/most effective method for getting the kids to go to bed. Basically you let them go to bed/fall asleep when they're tired/wherever they are and then yell at them for falling asleep not in bed. It is kind of funny to observe and it make me wonder what they might do if I ever fall asleep by the fire.
Beyond the going to bed habits of my host family I think my sleeping habits are also kind of amusing. I go to bed every night by 10:30 at the latest but I usually go into my house shortly after dinner, around 9 or 9:30. I have been doing this literally almost every night for the past two months but they are still really shocked every time I say I'm going to bed. This shock is followed by an insistence that I stay and chat. The few times I have stayed to chat our "chatting" consists of sitting/lying in silence and staring at either the fire or the sky. So though chatting is also really not that much of an interaction they still insist that I must stay and chat which really means stare awkwardly at each other in silence.