One hundred Freshman students attended the first movie night in the fifth floor auditorium. The movie was delayed almost an hour because of technical difficulties. The DVD player wasn’t connected to the system and this problem was above my pay grade. I had two Chinese teachers helping, and I discovered a USB version of “How To Train Your Dragon” in my pocket (more lucky than good).
While trying to fix the DVD, we changed some sound settings and couldn’t get the sound to work. When that was solved, the movie software was out of sync with the picture, we switched software and got it working, but the power failed to the system. Rebooting solved the problem, a couple times. Finally, when all was ready, we turned out the lights by turning off the breakers in the breaker box. Unfortunately, we turned off the power to the computer by flipping all the breakers . . . I told one of my colleagues that we were more entertaining than the movie !
Movie night was a couple weeks earlier than I expected because the Freshmen didn’t have the military training in September, a surprise to everybody. We were all surprised by the early start of classes. Last minute changes are common in China, and even the highest bosses are subject to the “surprise” phenomena. I just roll with it now. I’m used to it.
We talked about the movie in our classes this week and I highly recommend the movie for education purposes. It explores how the young boys never measure up to their father’s expectations. The boy is rescued from a dragon by his father in the beginning of the movie. At the end of the movie the boy arrives just in time to save his father from the big “boss” dragon. It is like a real family where the members love each other, but don’t approve of each other. Good movie.