My Brazilian TV

It is that time of year again. All the season premieres are right around the corner. Now, I don’t watch an excessive amount of TV, but I do have my favorite shows.

Lucky for me this move to Brazil didn’t disrupt my loyal following.

Now before you start thinking I am a sell out who is hurting for a cultural experience, let me say that we thought long and hard about our decision to continue our US television habits here.

They offer a package in Maringá that does have some shows in English with Portuguese subtitles. Most of them are 2 to 3 seasons behind, but I did enjoy watching them at the hotel.

We questioned whether we should just get that and get engrossed in some Portuguese television. Were we not getting a true experience by trying to find US options?

Then we saw the price. Like everything else electronically driven here it was just way to expensive for what we would be getting. We’d be paying for channels we’d barely watch just to have a little English around the apartment.

So we went with option number 2.

We got a SlingBox.
This handy thing allows us to watch TV anywhere that the program is installed and the internet is fast enough. We've got family at home who have cable and TiVo so the SlingBox captures that programming and allows us to watch it on my laptop here in Brazil. It is possible to hook the laptop up to the TV and watch it, but normally we just make do with the laptop itself.



So I basically have all the options that our family in the US does. Even with the time changes I still get to watch all the new shows by recording them.

Honestly, I’m not sorry at all that we did this. I definitely watch a lot less TV than I did back home, but I have found what I do watch has been a comfort to me.

I used to watch CNN every morning while getting ready for work and now I can still do that while I work at my computer in the mornings. It’s allowed me to still have some of my familiar routines despite all the change we’ve gone through in the past year.

My husband would sum up the decision in one simple word – football.

He still gets to keep up with college football and the Big Ten while we are away. We watch plenty of futebol too, but the Americana version holds a lot of thoughts of home for us.

Autumn, college days, Thanksgiving. Like I said, it is actually quite comforting.

So, yes, when it comes to the whole TV thing, we cheat a little bit on our authentic experience and bypass what is available here. I do watch TV in Portuguese to help with learning the language, but I can’t say I’ve been able to really get into any shows.

We are definitely fortunate to have some of the best media entertainment in the US.