Chasing Time

So I have to say, flying to Abu Dhabi from Scotland sucks.  I also have to say that I think the longer you travel the easier it is to get in to the new time zone - at least the only long distances we've travelled so far.  Going West you are so exhausted that you fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow, and going East you manage to buoy yourself for a few hours before falling in to bed at an appropriate time, and then you fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow.  Okay it may then be hard to get up the next morning flying East, but if you have enough discipline, or a reason to get up, it's pretty easy to get in to the swing of the new time zone.

Flying here though, like I said, sucks.  Every single flight from Europe seems to land in the middle of the night.  Unlike friends who went to Italy this Spring Break and left there at 9pm - which with a 2-year old is never going to have a good result! - we at least managed to leave Edinburgh at a decent 3pm.  And the kids did well: the food was served, they watched a movie, they lay down for a sleep, they all had between 1 and 4 hours, and woke up in pretty good moods.  Equivalent to a long afternoon nap, which will keep them going well in to the night.  By the time we landed in Doha it was 10pm body clock time, midnight local time and we flew out to Abu Dhabi two hours later.  We arrived at 4.30am local time, which was about 1.30am body clock time, and still the kids were on pretty good form.  In fact, but the time we finally got back to our house an hour later, they were claiming they weren't tired and didn't want to go to bed.  Fat chance!

So we all fell asleep dead to the world from 6am (except the Don who still had to go to work) till I finally decided to we really couldn't sleep past noon, and so our struggle to get back in to Abu Dhabi time began.  Och no, it's not been that bad... the kids have slept longer in the mornings (I woke them up at 11am the following day) which I can't complain about, we've generally managed to still get them in to bed at the same times despite the late starts, and Joey is definitely sleeping longer during the days, but they still just look. so. tired.  And I've struggled to sleep.  The first night I only managed to get to sleep at 4am, since my mind was buzzing though my body and eyes were exhausted, the second night I felt like I dozed the whole night and never got a proper deep sleep, and the last few nights, well, I've not woken up feeling refreshed.

Not that that will stop us going back to Europe, even just for short periods of time... But I would choose a long-haul transatlantic flight to Texas any day!