Come on, Groupon!

Life in China is hard, and so one has to unwind, relax and enjoy some leisure activities every once in a while. This is exactly what we did one day. 

Hunger Games: Catching Fire had been released in China (to my surprise. Isn't the movie all about resisting an oppressive government? For some reason I thought China would have a problem with that.) and more and more of our friends were seeing it. Being great fans of the series, we could not let this go on. Luckily, China also has the institution of the "groupon", allowing groups of friends to purchase things like movie tickets for a great price. We found such a groupon for the movie theater next door and embarked on our quest with our friends Ben and Esther to enjoy a night at the movies.

No such night is complete without some refreshments. As fate would have it, the theater is located directly next to (or more correctly, directly above) a McDonalds restaurant, and we obtained a wonderful ice cream cone at said establishment. 

Then the movie theater called. Jenn and I had already watched Thor 2 there, in a rather large auditorium. For me, these rooms are part of the theater experience. Well, things would not work out exactly that way this time. We walked all the way to our room, theater 11. I say "all the way", because it was, in fact, all the way in the farthest corner of the theater. And, as one can clearly see in the pictures, the room merited such a remote location. It was a dirty, small room, with uncomfortable bright lighting, really more the size of a home theater room, sans the comfortable chairs. Even though temperatures were low outside, no heating was provided, methinks the AC might even have been turned on a little bit.

Luckily, the light did go off when the movie started and it really was a good film and an enjoyable experience. And what kind of life would we be living if it didn't have these kinds of surprises in it?