1990 vs 2007

We lived in Germany in 1990 and the link back to the States for a very poor couple like us came in the form of the postal service. I don’t think ever in my life have I waited for and longed for mail as I did there. It was the only way. We called home very rarely, in fact I can only remember one phone call clearly and that is when I woke my mom up at probably 4 or 5 am to ask her how to make gravy. It was the first time I had ever prepared Thanksgiving dinner and she wasn’t very happy to hear from me! The telephone was very expensive. We paid our German phone bill on the Army post and I remember standing in line once and listening to this poor soldier in front of me trying to arrange a payment plan for his $800 phone bill. He had a new wife and she was homesick. I remember thinking that having an $800 phone bill would truly be the end of the world. Communicating back home now is amazing in comparison. Through the internet I get to talk to the family regularly, and instant message and email with friends often. I even get to see A on the webcam when we talk. It really makes things easier.

My friend M has been asking me about the television situation here. He was concerned I would not get to watch my favourite shows. I had visions of him coming to visit me with a suitcase full of American television DVDs he’d burned from his TiVo and us never leaving the couch the whole visit. I reported back that a lot of my favorite shows are on here but a season behind (they call a season a series). It was killing me though to know some of my favourite shows were debuting this week and I couldn’t watch them. Even though I can get to abc.com or nbc.com and see a link to the episode on line, I get blocked from watching any of that content because of my “location”. My only loophole right now is that because my billing address is still in America, I can download episodes of television shows from the American version of iTunes. So tonight, after I trudged home in the rain, I downloaded my ABC Thursday night from iTunes and chatted over MSN Messenger with M about it as I was watching it. Gotta love technology.