We just completed a week of exciting television! That is pretty amazing on a Greek island and especially considering that when we were in the US last year with 80 plus channels we still had trouble finding something of quality.

The show we enjoyed was Donald Trump's The Apprentice. We watched nearly the whole season in about one week courtesy of friends of a friend in the US. That is they tape the shows and then about twice a season send the copies to our friend who shares them around the island. This is the best way to watch because we can fast forward through the repetitive parts at the beginning of each episode. Also we can choose which commercials to watch as they are frequently our favourite parts.

Anyway, I was surprised myself at how entertained we were by a popular TV show. We really got involved with the participants and came down to the final episode not wanting either Randal or Rebecca to lose. We had quite the family discussions about ethics and business and needs of TV productions. All very stimulating compared to our usual fare.

Greece has several TV stations but only a few broadcast their signal to our island; and only a few of those have any English language broadcasts--old movies with Greek subtitles. The two strongest stations are government owned so you can imagine how seldom there is something interesting on them. Though this year we have Eurovision to look forward to in May. I will write more about that in another post. Mostly we rent videos; the shop in Parikia has full selection.

For those expats who like to watch TV there are several satellite packages available. A few friends have a package from the UK; one has a predominately German package. I don't know if you can get mostly US programs--who would want to?