French tv

I'll admit. I watch a decent amount of tv here. I watch the morning news/talk show on France 2 while I eat my breakfast. I'm home everyday for lunch, so I watch the news and sometimes 30 Millions d'Amis (all about pets). If I can I try to catch C'est pas Sorcier on France 3 in the afternoon, and the evenings we watch a bit of news or other shows.

So, this is how I know that there are reruns of Police Academy every morning with William Shatner when he was 35. Then there's a German private eye show from the 70's, Derrick. I've never really watched either though. In the afternoon there are several game shows with varying levels of interest. TF1 and France 2 each have one on when I come home for lunch, and they're both really lame. The guests are all just trying to look good and the questions for the TF1 show are dumb: "What percentage of women are lying when they say size doesn't matter?" or "What percentage of people lie and say they need an egg so they can see the inside of their neighbor's place?"

I remember two years ago in the summer when I heard the news caster announce "Well, that's our last broadcast before our summer vacation. We'll be off the air for two weeks. Have a great vacation!" Since when do news casters take a vacation from reporting the news? I suppose everyone deserves a break, but have you ever heard of a newspaper stopping the presses for two weeks?

Not that all French tv is bad or strange. They're only one season behind with dubbed episodes of Desperate Housewives (which sounds like Des-pair-ate). And the show Brittney Spear's younger sister does is on in the afternoons. There are Friends reruns every evening on M6. And France 2 and 3 have good multiple installement made for tv movies every once in a while (A&E or Masterpiece Theatre style).

But with all that choice we have on our 5 channels (these are the Pyrénées, forget about tv through the internet or free satelite), we often find ourselves watching downloaded American tv. We watch Daily Show episodes a day or two late. We finished seasons one and two of How I Met Your Mother in 2 1/2 weeks. One Saturday of guilty pleasure we watched the entire first season of Beauty and the Geek and snickered at all the dumb blonds.

I might miss all the variety of the states with the Discovery Channel, WE, TLC, PBS, FX and all the other channels, but I'll never miss the commercials. They have the brillliant idea here to not put ads in during a show, which means you can actually watch the show, instead of suffer through a million ads between tiny segments. There aren't any bad local ads either, since the country isn't big enough to have multiple advertising markets. The scheduling is kind of weird though. Since there are fewer ads, shows start at 4:10pm or 5:55pm. No one here seems to mind that things aren't on the hour and half hour though.

Now for a completely different subject: I finished 9 months of teaching today. I can't believe it came so fast. The end of the year passed really quickly too with lots of missed classes due to field trips. It's been an interesting school year. Lots to love and lots to hate. Being stuck down here has made me ask "Is it Foix I hate? or France?". I think the answer is Foix, but I know that it's not where you live that makes you happy or not, but how you live there, just like she says.

"When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him.
In the same way the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one." -- Karl A. Menninger