Day 136: Jetlag, The Devil

A Schutz Family Flashback:

Man, jetlag is terrible. It is so much worse than when we went to Amsterdam last year. But then again, the circumstances were very different. A year ago we were going as tourists. When you are touring you have limited time and you don’t want to waste any. And I also had the luxury of starting my trip visiting my cousin Winke, who I had not seen for a VERY long time. So it was only natural to fight the desire for sleep and socialize. The day I arrived in Amsterdam I stayed up until around midnight their time and woke up at nine in the morning: a normal night of sleep. That was all I needed and I was ready to go for the rest of the trip.

Serbia on the other hand is an entirely different experience. And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that we are not here as tourist, but as residents. We also don’t have the social stimulation that you would get when visiting old friends or family. So, the first couple nights were brutal.

On our first night I finally couldn’t take it anymore around 7pm. Serena and Gray had fallen victim to a nap earlier in the afternoon to they were not quite ready for bed, but I just couldn’t hang, so closed our blackout shutters and went to bed. When I woke up, I felt great. By that time Serena and Gray had joined me in bed and I slipped out to start breakfast. And that is when things went terribly wrong. When I stepped out into the living room I realized it was still dark outside. I walked to the kitchen to find out what time it was… it was midnight. I had slept for five hours and it was only midnight. There was nothing else to do but watch late night Serbian TV… so I did that for a while… and then watched a movie (I packed a DVD player into my suitcase, thank god)… and about halfway into the movie Serena and Grayson woke up and joined me. I want to say that we all went back to bed around three or four… and reads… all I can say is that we should have set an alarm… we woke up again at 12:30 in the afternoon.

This ritual was repeated on night two. Except this time I woke up around 10:45pm after only sleeping a little under four hours. Serena and Gray of course eventually joined me… and we all went to bed again around four… and then woke up again around ten in the morning (which was much better).

So, after two miserable nights, I was finally able to get my jetlag under control on night three. Serena and I stayed up to watch a movie and we vowed not to go to bed until nine o’clock, which we successfully accomplished. Now, I did wake up again at midnight, but I would let myself get up and finally got out of bed around six in the morning. And that day was my first official day of work; so fortunately, I was pretty much locked into a schedule at that point. Hurray for me.

Serena and Grayson on the other hand is a completely different story. It has been just over a week now and they have not been successful in adjusting… quite yet. It makes sense though; they don’t have a schedule yet. There is not much going on to motivate a normal sleeping schedule at this point. But we’re working on it. We didn’t give Grayson a nap today so we are hoping to get him down at a descent hour, the only problem is that Grayson hasn’t slept through the night since we’ve arrived… but he will… eventually.

We are feeling much better now.

-JP