Television

We have cable TV in our apartment which is a nice convenience. I’m not sure how many channels we have but there are definitely about 45 that I’ve clicked through so far. Most of them are in Russian, but there are actually quite a few in English. My favorite channel so far is the BBC World News channel, but it shows the same stories over and over again on a 2 hour cycle. So you can really only watch for a limited time until it gets irritating. There are also several other European news channels and I’ll switch to them if I get bored.

The more interesting channels are the English non-news channels. There’s about three or four Christian Gospel channels straight from Bible Belt America, which I find really intriguing. I’ve heard that there are a fair amount of missionaries here, and I guess that’s represented in the television selection as well. It’s very weird to be in the middle of Azerbaijan and flicking through TV stations and then seeing a southern man preaching to one of those mega-churches. Another odd aspect to this is that there’s actually a Russian version of this kind of programming, and it’s not even dubbed. I saw a program with a Russian woman standing on a podium preaching in Russian about the Bible and then at the bottom of the screen there was an address for more information… in Wisconsin.

The Russian channels all actually provide a fair amount of entertainment. The programming is actually not worth watching in it of itself unless you just want to make observations about it, which is clearly all I’m doing. I suffered through enough Russian TV when I was in St. Petersburg that I would now gladly watch the same news stories over and over again on the BBC instead of watching the Russian TV again. However, some of the programs they have on Russian TV are downright hysterical, especially the Western imports. There’s a “Judge Judy”-esque show which is pretty funny to see all the Russians yell at each other in a court room and then watch the Judge melodramatically pound the gavel so it’s his turn to yell. I also caught a little bit of a Russian fortune telling/ mysticism show. There was this guy sitting on a podium in a ridiculous velvet costume with all these tea kettles around him giving gifts to various audience members who were sitting on these big poufy chairs. Really strange. If I get bored enough I’ll probably try to watch a couple more of these programs since they’re really pretty funny. I have yet to find any Russian soap operas though, and I’ve heard that those are the best.

There’s also a Pentagon news channel which I’ve been watching to get my America nostalgia fix. I figure it’s the closest I’ll get to C-SPAN. Today, since it’s 9/11, they’ve been showing a lot of stuff about what happened today 8 years ago. It’s actually a pretty interesting channel. Again, very strange to be watching pro-American military rhetoric in the middle of Azerbaijan.

I have yet to find a sports channel but I’m sure that there is one. I don’t think I’ll be having that busy of a social schedule for the next year so if I manage to find a sports channel I could maybe try to understand the world craze about soccer (ahem, futbol). For those of you living under a rock (which included me until very recently) the World Cup is coming up in 2010 in South Africa and the whole world has been going nuts over the qualifying games. The World Cup is every 4 years, so it’s a very big deal. Currently, Brazil is in first place. Obviously, Azerbaijan does not have a great team and they’ve been out of the running for a while. Maybe I’ll randomly pick someone to root for. The underdog since I’m a Red Sox fan? We will see.

I bought four more movies today- I think I'm going to be watching a lot of movies this year. 4 for 10 manat, which is about $11 or $12. So cheap! I bought The Hurt Locker, Chronicles of Narnia (don't hate), The Boy in Stiped Pyjamas, and Enemy at the Gates. I've always wanted to just sit down and watch the whole series The West Wing, and they have a boxed set (all 8 seasons) for 100 manat. This seems way too expensive, although there are 56 DVDs in there. Maybe if he would sell it to me for 80 manat I'll buy it. Thoughts?

I've been getting harassed to put up pictures and I will put some up in several hours once I finish making dinner, I promise!