La Hora Maya

I had my first run-in today with what John calls "Rebel time." You see, the local Mayan population refuses to go along with dayligt savings time, yet the government continues to use it. "They're still fighting the Spanish, at least in their minds," says John. Its an interesting place to draw the line, but thats what keeps the culture separate from mainstream Mexico. The net effect is that when someone tells you a time to meet, you have to ask, "Mayan time or summer time?"

There's other ways to say this too, depending on how controversial you feel like being that day. Local time/summer time is on the least controversial end, followed by Mayan time/summer time and natural time/summer time in the middle, and rebel time/submissive time on the more hardcore end.

This Morning, John told me to meet him at 8:30 AM check out "the job site." We did not discuss which 8:30 AM. I ended up showing up an hour early, at 7:30 AM, Mayan time. I'm desperately trying to catch up on writing, so I told him I could just write for an hour while he did what he needed to do. He would have none of that.

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