Taking the Scenic Route

Yesterday Zach went to retrieve his work email and it kept dropping after a bit, so he went to the window in hopes of a better connection.  Still didn’t work.  Found out when he went to work that the enire mail server system in North America is down for his company.  So, it wasn’t the connection this time.

However, I have noticed that the internet connection is pretty dang slow compared to what I am used to.  I finally have time to read blogs, but they don’t always come up, and almost every time I go to make a comment (especially on xanga blogs) I get dropped.  To reconnect I have to go through a huge rigamarole and lots of waiting again, so I am just not even going to try and comment any more.  lol. 

The TV is, naturally, almost all in German.  There is one channel that is in English, although I think it comes out of Britian, not America, and is another version of CNN.  Pretty much the only thing being reported right now is the War in Georgia (I think it was part of the former USSR).  There is very little Olympic coverage or non-war coverage, and there is a limit to how much I can listen to about war because it really upsets me.

Therefore, all the Olympic coverage I have seen has been pretty much on mute or very low volume (if my back is turned, so I can hear the difference when they move to another sport and see if it is something I am interested in).  I haven’t seen a single shot of Women’s Gymnastics.  None.  I am a little frustrated.  Watching gymnastics is about the only sport, outside of figure skating, that I enjoy watching, and the enjoyment of both of those sports formed when I was a little girl watching Nadia and Dorthy Hamill.  lol.  (that dates me, doesn’t it).  Finally, this morning (Thursday), I saw a few Men’s Gymnastics routines on the high bar. 

Most of the coverage is on syncronized diving (didn’t know this was an olympic sport), kayaking (didn’t know this was an olympic sport either), swimming, (although they do a lot of the prelims and I miss a lot of the finals with the Americans racing), fencing (not horrible), some sport that takes place on a field  that resembles a soccer field with teams and they use their hands to throw a ball around (I think, I am looking at a small tv at little bitty people), field hockey (I assume…I have never seen field hockey, but they have hockey sticks hitting a ball around a field), judo or karate or something like that, weight lifiting (most boring sport ever),  and some Equestrian stuff.  When the horses move around and jump over things, not so bad, but when they just walk around the ring in a pattern I don’t get what they are doing exactly and I can’t understand the commentary, so it just looks like a horse walking in circles.

I wasn’t too upset about the lack of gymnastics coverage at first because I assumed I could go online and watch it.  There were several places to watch videos online, and, naturally, some great sites from the US that would cover the people I have been following.  I learned something.  Even though I downloaded the Microsoft viewer (something I loathe doing, but it was the only way to view the videos) you can’t view anything on those sites if you are trying to connect from another country.  WHAT THE HECK!?!  I was so mad.  I tried other english speaking countries and they had the same dang policy.  So I will be watching no Olympics in English this time around.  Well, maybe the closing ceremony because we get home that day, but since TV will not be a priority, I will probably miss those too.

I just want to strangle the person who was supposed to get us the Rosetta Stone software and didn’t.  Arg!  Maybe I would understand a little more then, but you can’t really follow tv with a phrase book because they talk too fast.

For a short bit it is amusing to see American shows dubbed over because the voices are different.  In some instances, enough different to be comical to me.  I only watch about 3 minutes to hear the voices and then move on, but it is amusing for a bit.  Some of the shows I have seen:  NCIS (Abbi’s voice, in particular, is really wrong), CSI (the main redhead guy has such a distinctive voice that that one is funny to me too), Spongebob (rofl), Higglytown Heroes (annoying in any language), Rosanne (I could almost follow that one because I have seen so many of them), House (wrong, wrong, wrong), and a few other shows I recognized, but have never watched. 

The only thing we have watched more than 3 minutes of was Star Trek:  First Contact because we knew the dialoge well enough that we didn’t need to understand them, plus, we could almost understand them because we knew the English version well enough to hear the language similarities and could pick up on actual words. I bet if they showed Star Wars. Star Trek and Little House on the Prairie back to back a few times I could figure out the language because I have so many of them practically memorized.  (ok…I realize, that particualar combination is wierd, but that would be me)

I got an umbrella yesterday so that I am not stuck in the room every day because it seems to rain all of the time. I will probably still stay inside in the morning, posting, sipping coffee and tea, reading, etc, but after lunch I will go walk around the town a bit more. I feel a little better now so I want to go do something. (the stitches are now all out of my mouth. The final one let go this morning and my mouth feels much better. Still a little tender, but not horrible anymore)