When I'm in a Moroccan's home, the TV is usually on. When I go over to my site mate Stan's host family's home, the TV is always on. Sometimes we'll be watching a telecast of a musical performance in Arabic, or perhaps the Moroccan news, which is broadcast in either Arabic or in French.
Sometimes, though, when all of the members of the family happen to be out of the room, Stan will put on the BBC World News channel. Thus in the last week or so, we've gotten to watch news in English, which we've enjoyed. Recently on the BBC news channel, we watched coverage of Hurricane Irene making landfall in the USA.
I read news stories in English on the Internet when I'm in the cyber. As far as newspapers go, even when I'm traveling, most of the newspapers available are in Arabic, and the rest are in French. While I have gotten some news from French language newspapers, I've rarely done so, since I only do so when traveling to and through large cities.
When the Dar Chebab (youth center), where I do most of my volunteering, is open, the moudir (director) often watches news broadcasts on his computer, which include video footage, which I sometimes watch with him. However, those broadcasts, being on Al Jazeera, don't convey much information to me, since they are in Arabic, so I understand virtually nothing of what is being said in them.
Until Stan and I recently watched the BBC news, I hadn't thought of how I rarely watch video news coverage in English in the cyber. It's interesting how sometimes I don't realize that a particular thing has been missing from my life until I re-encounter it. It makes me start to think about what we habitually do in our lives, which it turns out we don't miss once it's gone, and which therefore perhaps we don't actually need...
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