Moon and SKY

On Saturday, 10 January, the full moon was incredibly bright. We actually had clear weather, so we could see it, and it was awesome. Pictures do not really do it justice, but they give you an idea.


For the next couple of days after that, both at night and in the morning, the moon put on a good show. This is a picture of the moon in the morning.

This one is at night, a day or two after the full moon.


Now for the SKY portion. SKY is the satellite TV service that we have here. I have heard that the parent company is British, but what we have is definitely Italian. We got a deal on it when we hooked up the phone and internet, so we decided to try it for a while. We have been unable to get AFN (Armed Forces Network) to work, so we are glad that we have SKY. SKY has lots of channels, and several different package options. We just have the basic package, so we don't get the movie channels or the sports channels (including at least 20 soccer channels - really!).

In addition to the real Italian channels, we have several Fox channels (Fox, Fox Life, and Fox Crime) that show mostly American programs. The nice thing about SKY is that, if you watch a program that was originally produced in a language other than Italian, you can switch the language and watch it in the original language. That means that, when we find American programs like CSI, Desperate Housewives, or The Simpsons (yes, all of those are available here, among many others), we can watch them in English. The three Fox channels are also shown with a one hour delay as Fox +1, Fox Life +1, and Fox Crime +1. The nice thing about that is that the same programming comes on one hour later so if 2 programs you want to see are on at conflicting times, you can watch one of them later. The Fox channels show programs that are broadcast on all the nextworks in the US, not just Fox. I was very excited when I found the current season of Ugly Betty on Fox Life on Tuesday nights. The season didn't start until 6 January, so I assume that they had to delay it to get it dubbed in Italian (though of course I watch it in English). We also get the History Channel, National Geographic, Discovery, Hallmark, E!, and MTV, though I think the programming is a bit different than the same channels back home. Not all of the programs are available in English, but most of them are.

We were a bit concerned about keeping up with our favorite shows because you cannot just watch them online like I had originally planned. If your ISP is outside of the US, you are blocked from watching most programs through network websites. Ugly Betty is the only one that I have found so far in its current season on our TV, but I'm sure others will appear, or we will join Netflix next year and watch them on DVD.