What time is it?

I will never get accustom to the sun going down so early each afternoon. When the kids wake up from their afternoon naps, the sun is down and the street lights are on. When we head out after lunch, we can leave the sunglasses at home because we'd be out in the evening sun.

The strange daylight hours have something to do with the fact that China has only one time zone (Beijing Time). That's like using Central Time Zone throughout all of America. I'm glad to not be in the West. I hear the western provinces of China simply keep an unofficial time that's adjusted with the sun. However, government and state workers keep the official Beijing time.

Also, we're just so far north here that the days become shorter and shorter. We plan to celebrate the Winter Solstice on December 21 marking the shortest day of the year. In actuality, we celebrating the fact that the days will get longer after the Solstice.

There's just something about my body's clock that insists on getting sleep after the sun's been down for 3 hours. So each night around 7:00 PM I feel like heading to bed for the night. I resist and usually make it to a reasonable bedtime later in the evening. This problem is flipped in the Spring when the sunrise is around 3:30 AM but that's another story for another time.