Wednesday, April 23, 2014

T is for Twilight (and Time)

Twilight here is very predicable. Being so close to the Equator, Ethiopia's days are pretty uniform in length to the point were the longest day might only have an extra thirty minutes on the shortest day. Roughly, the sun rises at six thirty and sets at six thirty, and this is so consistent that Ethiopian time is based on it. That is, what a European calls 6 AM an Ethiopian would call 12 AM. Hour zero, and thus a new day, is when the sun is just peaking over the horizon.

Things can get confusing. Is that meeting at three o'clock three o'clock international time and thus in the afternoon or local time which would be nine am in international standard?

Additionally, Ethiopia has it's own calender. 13 months, 12 of which are exactly 30 days and the last one varies between 4,5,or 6 depending on the year. New Years is September 11, instead of January 1st, and as of right now the year is 2006. As awesome as it is to have a school year identified by one numerical year, it's a mess when I want to take a day off for the American New Years (or Christmas, those dates are different too).

1 comments:

Corinne said...

Hilarious! It sounds like lyou are geting used to it though.

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