Morjes!

Welcome to my blog. I write about fitting in, sticking out, and missing the motherland as a serial foreigner.

TV zombies

We were in Oman for the weekend. One of the nights, we stayed at a hotel in Sohar. And that hotel had a little something called TELEVISION. I'm going to try to say this in as unsanctimonious a way as possible, but we do not have TV at our house. Like many of you, I'm sure - it seems like TV is not so much a given these days because of the ubiquity of DVDs and Netflix. I mean, we have A TV at our house, but it's in the under-the-stairs playroom and is only hooked up to a DVD player. For their entire lives, my kids have understood that to watch something on a TV is to be able to pause it and rewind it and put in something else if you want to, at any time.

Well, TV in a hotel doesn't work that way. You flip through the channels (ooooooh) and if something looks good, you watch it for a while but don't blink because you can't rewind it (wow!). After one show is over, another one comes on. AUTOMATICALLY. With fancy, loud, bright commercials in between. And sometimes there are whole channels devoted to addicting kids to their content (a channel called "Playhouse Disney" at the hotel) and our girls could not. look. AWAY. They were TV zombies.

It was amazing. They were watching TV. Jeremy and I were watching them watch TV. And even though that was four whole days ago, which is a loooong time for a four-year-old, Magdalena cannot stop asking about TV, and when we can go back to the hotel and watch some more, etc. etc. I suppose it's just as well we don't have it at home because I don't think I'd hear the end of it.

Or the novelty would wear off and it would be just another entertainment option. Whichever.

Bokashi update

February 22nd, outsourced