What's on TV?

If you've ever been to our house, you've seen in the living room a big, beautiful, 50 inch flat screen plasma TV. We love it. And we're missing it pretty bad right now, as well as the programming we once enjoyed on it. Adam had the foresight to set some things up for us during this difficult time =) We have access to Netflix streaming and the Vulkano feed; and we can watch DVDs and some shows downloaded to the hard drive. However, all of this viewing is currently being done on a 17 inch laptop screen, the same laptop that serves as our mega resource for car buying, house hunting, language translation, communication, and so much more, and also as the only computer in our typically two-computer family. The speakers aren't loud enough on their own, so we had to go out and by computer speakers. We use the computer during the day on the kitchen counter. Then we take it, and the speakers, and a whole bunch of cords and plugs, and balance it all on a tiny little table in the middle of the living room. We have to close the shades and angle the screen just right so we can see it without glare or weird colors. And as we're watching our shows, we have to make sure the kiddos don't get too rambunctious around our precarious setup and knock the whole thing to the ground.

That being said, we finally broke down and turned on the hotel TV just to see what we might find. And, I'll tell ya, we were entertained!

I guess at Adam's work the Americans call the local feed 'TV for the dead.' And, they are right, to some extent. I think we found something similar to Sesame Street. It was a show for kids with some live-action video about an ice cream truck. In it were two adults, talking... and talking... and droning... on and on about getting the ice cream truck out of the garage, moving freight around, etc. Oh, my word! It was sooo boring!

But, we did find the BBC, CNN, Fox News, and some sports station all in English (thank goodness!). However, we just got the biggest kick out of Nickelodeon Reclame. Imagine all your favorite Nick shows, voiced over in a different language. What's Hannah Montana without her awful nasally voice? She's still whiny annoying Hanna Montana, of course! Our favorite show was SpongeBob Square Pants. Now, I usually don't watch SpongeBob because it's really just stupid to begin with. But, it is a familiar show, so we thought we'd see what it would be like voiced-over. Well, it was Hilarious!! Patrick sounded just a dumb as ever. And we saw a lot of Squidward in this episode as it was about him and a bunch of his clones (I think). However, something got lost in translation, as all the characters kept yelling, "Octo! Octo!" whenever they were calling for Squidward. The whole thing was riotous, like watching a Kung Fu show for Dutch kids. I just kept thinking to myself, "Man, I want to be a voice-over actor!"

Eventually, we just couldn't take it anymore. I'm sure we had something else better to do, so we turned it off. However, this will not be the last time I watch local TV. It's funny, and someday I really hope to be able to understand it (wishful thinking? I hope not). And when I do, if I find something good, I'll let you know! =)