Coping with a 10-Hour Time Change: The Plan

Since I decided to teach in Korea, I've known I would have to face a 10-hour time change (well, it would have been 7 had I left from Victoria, but I'm not there right now). With this change looming in a few days I thought I would share my strategy.

Since Korea is behind us (well to be completely accurate, they are ahead, but it's less of a change to make the change this way), all I have to do is gradually stay up later until I have adjusted. This seems easy enough except for a few reasons, the biggest being that if I were to get up at 8am Seoul time, that would be 6pm for me here. Since I have a lot to do during the days here, this was not an option. My flight also poses some challenges for me in that I leave early in the morning for Vancouver (see my flight plan in a previous post).

I have been staying up as late as I can the last few days and trying to sleep in as late as I can. I've been able to stay up until 3:30am so far and am going to try for 4:00 or 4:30 tonight. The plan for tomorrow night is not to go to sleep at all, until I get on my plane in Toronto at 8:30. Hopefully I will be konked out for the entire 5+ hours of that flight. That will leave me waking up around 3am Seoul time. If I nap on the second flight, I should be able to get into a normal pattern. So far the plan has gone well (except me waking up earlier than I would like and being pretty bored late at night).

We'll see if this works well. I probably have to do a lot in Seoul this weekend (like figure out how to get to work, where to buy food, etc.).

Stay tuned to see if my plan works or if I fall asleep at the gate in Toronto and miss my flight to Vancouver.