Dearest Rachel –
I’m not going to lie to you (after all, why start now?), this trip has wreaked havoc with my circadian rhythm. For all that I’ve been trying to stay up later in order to thus sleep in that much longer thereafter, I’ve been waking up at around two in the morning regardless of those efforts. To be sure, that’s partly because these attempts to stay awake have been relatively feeble as well – last night, for instance, saw me crashing some time between eight and nine, according to my phone, so waking up at two or so isn’t all that awful. It’s still roughly six hours of sleep; a little on the low side, but not terrible. Besides, even at that hour, or shortly thereafter, light is already starting to seep into the room from behind the blackout curtains, so my mind is thinking it should be up, anyway.
Here’s the twist to all that; you’ll notice that I said that those times were ‘according to my phone.’ But my phone is still set to Japan time, and most likely won’t correct itself until next we make landfall; somehow, it doesn’t seem to be able to reconcile itself to the ship’s time, despite being connected to its internet (although judging from what we can tell, said internet is based out of Japan, as opposed to traveling with the ship as such, so maybe that’s understandable). As of Sunday (which is now yesterday for me, but still early afternoon back home), that fell out of sync by an hour as we made our way north and, more importantly, east.
Anyway, this means that I’m actually getting up at three. And, since this time around, I made at least some effort to go back to sleep before surrendering to my body’s and my mind’s activity, I wasn’t up and about until just shy of four; still absurdly early, but at least a little more reasonable.
The thing is, at this point, there are six more hours to be adjusted between where we are now, and where next we land. That landfall, by the way, takes place on the sixth of June. Six hours in six days; you don’t have to be a math major to know what this means. Setting apart the fact that one of these days is going to be duplicated as we cross the international date line (which adds a wrinkle to the calculation; is it taking six or seven days to get where we’re going to next?), this means that pretty much every day from here on out is going to contain but twenty-three hours, rather than the full twenty-four.
Of course, from that perspective, my out-of-syncness seems positively prescient; in fact, if I kept this up, by the time we reach Kodiak, I’d be waking up at ten in the morning, which would actually be inadvisable, given when the shore excursions we’ve been offered tend to be (which is to say, considerably earlier than that). At the same time, that would suggest that Daniel and I would be staying up well past midnight – and while he might already be doing that, I’ve no idea, since I’m not – and have no intention of doing so going forward. So I expect that this situation will slowly resolve itself… over time, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Meanwhile, I’m debating whether to continue to try to adjust to the present time zone, or if I should just keep up my odd hours for now, and wait for the rest of the ship to catch up with me. It’ll certainly mean that I’ll have less adjustment to make on my own part. On top of all that, my waking and wandering proved quite useful this morning, as I discovered that Dad had attempted to call me barely a few minutes ago. It was an accident, to be sure – he wouldn’t have deliberately tried to reach me at three (well, four) in the morning unless it was an emergency – but at least I was able to take the call, or at least call back mere moments later. So that worked out reasonably well, actually.
So, while I continue to decide what to do about this matter (and I’ll probably simply decide not to decide, which in itself is a decision), i’d appreciate it if you continued to keep an eye on me, and wished me and Daniel well. I’m pretty sure we’re still going to need it. 
Letters to Rachel 