A little Teletubby shall lead us ...

... to the airport, anyway. Saw this Po doll (I think it's Po. Why do I know this stuff?) hanging from a painted-over stop/alto sign on our way to drop Dan off for a flight. The Teletubbies have made it across the pond to Costa Rica and a few years ago there was a gang in CR called the Teletubbies. (Doesn't sound very menacing, does it?) I don't know if they're still around.

Thank goodness I haven't seen the gang or the TV show here. Some of these kids' programs (Barney comes to mind) are agonizing enough in English. Hearing them in Spanish? Not fun. Except Blues Clues (Pistas de Blue), which I must admit I have watched a couple of times here in español. Steve is especially well-dubbed. Good times!

¿Se habla inglés?

You know what's weird? Last night I was browsing through TV channels while waiting for Dan's taxi to arrive from the airport and I stopped on an interesting-looking British movie. As I started watching it, I realized I was reading the subtitles. And not just because I can't help reading them—which is often the case—but because I had to.

Yeah, the movie was in English, but in all fairness to me this wasn't the Queen's English. The accents of a couple of characters were so thick I had a hard time understanding what was being said. So I used subtitles. Spanish subtitles. To understand a movie in English.

Once I realized what I was doing I felt kinda freaked out and turned the TV off in favor of a book.

A few times I've watched French movies by reading the Spanish subtitles, but usually after a while my brain gets tired or I get bored. Of course this is almost always at night and is a significant violation of the English-only television-viewing zone rules of the house, so I should know better!

Random thoughts on late-night TV

Sometimes near the end of the day, Dan and I relax in front of the TV—maybe watch a little news or catch the second half of CSI. More often than not we have a TV language rule by this hour: nothing in Spanish. No soccer (definitely no soccer!), no dubbed sitcoms, no Latin American talk shows—nada. It’s an English-only television-viewing zone, and thankfully—with gratitude to the magic button on our remote that removes dubbing from certain shows—we have a handful of decent American channels from which to choose.

So what if we’ve already seen every episode of Seinfeld a zillion times? Who cares that the rerun of Law & Order is from the days of Lenny Briscoe and Ben Stone? We can get some of these old shows plus Fox News and CNBC—which is what we most commonly watch—and in a pinch, we’ll even watch local news for Denver, the city that provides our network feed.

Dan’s traveling a lot this month, so I’ve been reading at night or hanging out here on the computer hoping to catch him on IM. The no-English TV stuff has been less of an issue. (Though I gotta admit, I did catch an episode of Growing Pains—circa 1987—the other night. Too bad it wasn’t the episode with Brad Pitt, but I still enjoyed the Seavers’ antics. And Wow! Check out that big ‘80s hair!)

Of course mostly what’s on TV now is election coverage stuff, and we’re starting to burn out on that a bit. (We’ve already voted—and yeah, it’s important to stay on top of what’s going on, but it’s not like I’m gonna call the United States and ask to change my ballot, right?) Tonight I’ll watch the debate and all the pundits taking jabs at the candidates and each other afterwards. It’s almost like I’m rubbernecking after an accident on I-75. I want to look away for a while but just can’t.

Overall, we watch less TV here than in the US. We don’t have DVR, we don’t have high def (which we desperately miss during football season) and we have a much smaller selection of choices when it comes to programming. I miss the DVR (because really, who wants to watch commercials?) and certainly we are looking forward to the return of HD when we move back to the States, but other than that, the limited selection is OK. Though I admit we draw the line for watching American shows at MacGyver. (Talk about hair styles of the ‘80s!)

I really do wish we could get the US version of SportsCenter on ESPN, but I won't complain (at least not too loudly or too often!).

I want my NBC

One of my favorite slang terms in Spanish is "estamos fritos," which means—literally—we're fried. The translated saying means we're out of luck. We're hosed.

So here we are in Costa Rica, greatly anticipating two weeks of glorious Olympics watching. Swimming! Gymnastics! Track and field! But when we turned on the TV to begin days of sports viewing we got a polite little note from our Costa Rican cable company that our NBC feed out of Denver was being blacked out. For two weeks. No games. ¡Estamos fritos!

I know you're wondering about Costa Rican TV. I mean, we can watch in Spanish, right?

You'll have to take my word for it when I tell you that Olympic coverage in this country is spotty and at times nearly non-existent. It is enough to make a girl cry.

Dan immediately began scrambling around with the computer, desperate to find some way for us to get video. Through a convoluted series of riggings made more difficult by our being in Costa Rica, he has finagled a connection from his laptop to our projector TV, and at night we are watching bits and pieces of the games on the wall in our office. I've been lying on the floor atop a sleeping bag and pillows, and Dan sits on the office chair to watch. Sometimes the girls come in with beanbags or pillows and join us.

We can't watch any video until NBC posts it (and of course that is delayed until the footage has aired on the network), and even then it's not the best quality and certainly not even close to HD. It's really sad.

Many of you know we’re huge swimming fans, and it's hard for us to wait until tonight to watch the men's 4x100 relay, which looks to be one of the greatest moments in US Olympic history. NBC is pulling its broadcasts off youtube, so this morning Dan and I—in sheer desperation after hearing about the mind-blowing anchor swim by Lezak—watched a video on youtube of the relay from a television station in Brazil. We can understand just enough Portuguese to get the idea of what the announcers are saying—and they were actually very animated—and in between Portuguese we kept hearing "Michael Phelps!" I got my first goose bumps of the games watching Lezak’s thrilling comeback. Now I'm aching to see it in English and am hoping for post-relay interviews and (dare I wish it?!) a medal ceremony.

I miss Bob Costas and his end-of-the-day synopses. I miss the tear-jerking and sometimes cheesy stories about athletes who have experienced the hard knocks of life. I miss the segments about China and how it prepared for the games, the Olympic theme, the medal ceremonies, hearing my national anthem, the interviews with athletes. I might even miss the commercials. I want my Olympics!

We waited four years for this? Estamos fritos, indeed.