30 September 2007

Staying sane as an expat without language skills

It's probably a pretty common plaint, but coming to Germany without a word of German (what was I thinking with 4 years of Latin and 4 of French?) it's almost frighteningly isolating to never hear an adult word that I can understand.

I am tremendously grateful that L and my parents have allowed me to set up a Slingbox at their house. That, added to a separate cable box with DVR, has allowed me to watch American TV and movies at my discretion. The only drawback is that the operating system is inferior to that of TiVo so it is more difficult to actually look up and plan for movies. So if anyone sees anything out there on HBO, Cinemax, SciFi, etc that they think I might like to watch, please drop me an e-mail and I can set the DVR to tape it. I’m very grateful to have family to allow me to use their connection because there is a professional organization that does this that actually maintains your own box and satellite dish and then charges an additional monthly fee for the privilege and I could never have justified the cost of doing that (until I went insane, I guess…).