Thursday was neither a holiday, nor did it carry any civic significance.
Yet, there was no work in city hall.
There high schools were out.
The schools didn't have class.
Even the pre-school was closed.
Thursday was officially hangover day in my town.
With the fiestas finishing with the big bash Wednesday night, all of these institutions decided to close down for the day to allow their employees to recover from a long night (and early morning) of celebrating.
It felt like a Sunday morning on a university campus. Except that it was a Thursday, and the entire town was dead.
In the U.S., we don't really have the officially sanctioned hangover days. The nights of big partying come the night before holidays, so that people don't lose a day of work. You have New Year's Eve and pre-Thanksgiving bar night. But the day after the Super Bowl everybody is expected to be at work on time. The Tuesday after civic holidays aren't treated any differently. But here, we got the day off.
I'm not complaining about having the day off of work, which I didn't really take because I went to Machala to take care of some errands, but I'm just confused by the reasoning for this day off and the message it is passing on to the society and how this mentality, in some way, might explain a lot about the society in which I live.
I could really go on an on about my opposition to these types of vacation days, but to save space I'll just say that I don't agree with the policy and leave it at that.
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i think it is one of the things about other cultures that they really have going over ours.
their society is able to adapt its organization to the humanity of its participants. we're people, not robots, but the systems we put in place to organize ourselves can't recognize that, and rather than people taking control of them and universally recognizing how certain parts of our lives don't fit into these systems well and adapting to suit those, we let the systems control us. it's a hard thing to do, but its beautiful when organic human nature trumps the guidelines we've set for ourselves.
i'm not sure hangover day is the greatest manifestation of that, but it works.
i'll be everyone else there really loved having that day off.
everyone is traveling here wednesday before thanksgiving; why are there classes & exams & etc?
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