15 Sep Early birds vs. Night owls

There are two kinds of people in this world: early birds and night owls. On the one hand, early birds are those who like to wake up early so they can have an active and productive morning and afternoon. This kind of people are kind of inactive at nights and prefer to stay home, quiet and warm, rather than go out or do stuff at night. Obviously, since they wake up early, they should go early to bed too.

On the other hand, we have night owls. This kind of people really enjoy nights. They’re way more activated at night than during the day. They could stay awake until 3 AM everyday with absolutely no troubles. Therefore, it’s really difficult for them to wake up early, even thought they should do it just as everyone else. Night owls also have jobs and schedules! But they would rather wake up late everyday of their lives. But, you know, responsibility is responsibility.

Personally, I’m a night owl. There’s something about the night that I love. Maybe darkness and silence make every night having a special mystery that attract us, the night owls. And of course, nights are always linked to fun, craziness and secrets. You know this saying: “What happen in *introduce any place/city* stays in *place/city*. Usually, whatever happen, happens at night.

But what I’m here to talk about is not people, it’s culture. My question is: can a hole country be a night owl or an early bird? Well, for what I’m living right now, the answer is definitely YES. If I have to classify the U.S citizen as night owls or early birds, I would say early birds. Nevertheless, if I talk about my home country, Spain, we are definitely night owls.

Here, in the U.S, everything is done earlier than in Spain. They wake up at 6 or 7 AM, then have lunch at 12:30 PM, dinner at 6 PM and go to bed at 10 PM. In Spain it is way different. Wake up time is similar, around 7 or 8 PM most people are already awake or at their jobs/classes. But meal times are always later. We have lunch between 2 and 3 PM, dinner between 8:30 and 10 PM, and we go to bed around 12 PM.

It’s pretty obvious that the day-to-day schedules are very different. We, Spanish people, like to make days a little bit longer by enjoying nights a little bit more. In Spain, the “night culture” is a thing. Every time that most Spaniards have break or a free day, we love to go to the street, to a bar or wherever just to enjoy the afternoon and evening. Thus, nights are longer. By that I mean that parties last longer and start later. An adult in Spain (+18, not +21, thank God) would have a party night like this: dinner at 9 or 10PM, preparty form 10PM to 12 or 1 AM, enter the disco between 1 or 2 AM and go back home at 7AM. Here, in San Francisco at least, every disco shut down at 2AM. To a Spanish person, this is kind of crazy and, to be honest, boring.

I guess that every life style and culture has its advantages and disadvantages. For example, if you go parting the San Francisco way, you would be able to wake up at a decent hour next day. In Spain, if you go party, next day you’ll be sleeping off and anything else. But go back home with the dawn is kind of cool.

Anyway, whether I like it or not, I have to get used to this “early birds’ culture” that this country has, and take advantage of everything that I can. Now my mornings are more productive but my nights are, sometimes, kind of dull. But I’m enjoying everything anyway. I mean, this is SAN FRANCISCO.